


The Second Son

by CatONineTails



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, First Time, Graphic Description, Gratuitous Smut, Growing Up, Horror, Masturbation, Myranda Royce's bad influence, POV Sansa, Sansa-centric, The unwanted attentions of Petyr Baelish, Visions, Warging, Wargs, Westerosi sexual education
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-07-25 15:33:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7538233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatONineTails/pseuds/CatONineTails
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the gates of the moon, Alayne Stone leads a regimented half-life of sycophantism, lies and arbor gold. But her dreams belong to a girl she used to be, running alongside a wolf long dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Longing

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to warn readers that in this work I will not be shying away from gratuitous descriptions. GRRM's Westeros is a brutal world, and I've tried to follow on in that spirit. I won't go into detail and spoil the story, but I would like to take the opportunity to warn readers.  
> There will be explicit depictions of violence, and references to sexual abuse and assault. Whilst I have continued with the themes of dubious consent that are already present in Sansa's plot, I want to assure you that this will not be the focus of the work, and that all scenes of smut that I write occur with consent.  
> Please note that both Sansa and Sandor are individuals with a large amount of post-traumatic stress and survivor's guilt. This is heavily present in this work, and may be unpalatable for some individuals.  
> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy this work.

 

**Longing**

 Being Alayne was tiresome. The Lord Paramount had announced that whilst Harry and Alayne were to be married, Alayne was far too young to bear child, and the marriage was to be stalled until her seventeenth nameday. In the meantime she played her days as a sycophant for Petyr Baelish and the Lords of the Vale, taking upmost care to present herself as a humble, religious, and most of all, grateful bastard. The nights were often occupied by Sweetrobin, who she played step-sister, nursemaid and mother to, when in truth she was his cousin. At the end of her days she would fall into bed and dream.

 Oft she would awake to the monotony of being Alayne from terrible nightmares, dreams of her true kin, and their terrible fates, or her marriage bed, and what had awaited her inside of it. But other mornings she would wake from dreams of her wolf, Lady.

 Whilst she enjoyed these dreams, in the sliver of the morning when she could permit herself to not be Alayne, she would feel lost, cold and abandoned.

 She relished running with Lady. It was the only thing in her life that felt true and real. However, love it as she might, in the dreams, and in the morning, an eerie feeling haunted her. The dreams themselves were idyllic and all too quickly forgotten, but carried an air of _wrongness_. It was as if she was looking through the wrong eyes and all this time Lady was trying to lead her to something, or encourage her to do something important, but she couldn’t figure out what it was.

 But for the most part, she was Alayne, and Alayne had duties, not dreams. And Alayne's days were long. Where Sansa knew her heraldry, Alayne was more invested in the servant’s hierarchy. Her father expected her to keep the house, and most importantly, tend to the sickly Lord of the Vale, to keep him well, happy and compliant. He was prone to shaking spells and temper tantrums.

On this occasion, he had thrown his supper porridge at Ely, his least favourite maid. His little arm was weak, and his aim poor, and it was Alayne  left with the porridge stuck in her hair.

Alayne decided to give in to Myanda Royce’s demands to share her bed, motivated by a desire to avoid nightmares and enjoy female company. Most importantly of all, if she was in Randa’s bed, Sweetrobin would hardly be able to crawl into her bed and paw at her bosom. That, and her Father’s attentions had increased as of late. It seemed like it would be only a matter of time till he would do the same.

When she entered Randa’s boudoir, she found the occupant of the room, all plump bosom and curls of brown. Surprisingly, Mya Stone, Randa’s closest confidant was nowhere to be seen.

The two were nearly always together. Alayne suspected that Randa had ulterior motives in this new friendship, but none-the-less, enjoyed the spirited woman’s company and gossip as a reprieve from her duties. A bastard like Alayne was allowed to enjoy the type of raunchy conversation that Randa preferred.

When Randa greeted Alayne into her chambers, she practically purred. “Finally, I have the Lord Paramount’s dearest daughter. Welcome to my humble chambers.”

Alayne could hardly call Randa’s quarters humble. The stone walls were decorated with rich tapestries depicting red blossoming flowers. The motif even continued onto the bed. Alayne was surprised that a woman of Randa’s maturity still had girlish dolls on her bed.

“I am most glad I have come. I needed someone to cheer me up. Where is Mya?” Alayne inquired.

“One of the mules is poorly, I suspect Mya will bed down in the stables tonight. She’ll probably enjoy their company better than ours, she’s half mule herself,” she snorted. “What has brought your mood so low, sweet Alayne?”

Alayne shrugged “Poor Sweetrobin ails.”

“The old illness?” Randa did her best to look concerned for the sickly boy. Back when they had first descended from the Eyrie, Petyr had wanted the boy strong. He had tried to convince the Lords of the Vale. But the child’s illness had undermined him. It was common knowledge now that dear Sweetrobin was prone to shaking sickness.

“The very same,” Alayne nodded, slipping under the covers.

“Your Father is so demanding. I hope your slumber has not been too affected?”

“I have nightmares often,” Alayne admitted, “but I also have frustrating dreams where the things I want to happen will not occur. It feels as if my own dreams conspire against me.”

Randa murmured an agreement, hopping onto the bed and drawing the curtains around them, closing the rest of the world out. “I know that feeling. As a child I used to get awful night terrors, but worst of all, I couldn’t scream, I knew that if I were to scream, all would be right. But I couldn’t, not matter how hard I tried. But I grew out of those terrible things.”

Alayne thought about her dreams, where she was another girl, a girl who ran with a wolf. “The frustrating thing is that it’s not my nightmares. It is dreams where I want things to happen to me and I can’t seem to trigger what I want to occur to me.”

Alayne pouted a bit too sourly and Randa burst into laughter, leaping to only one conclusion. 

“Oh ho ho Alayne, what do you want to happen in your dreams so badly? Let me guess. A rendezvous with a man hmm? Our mutual friend Harry? Or is it another man who you knew in Gulltown? Oh it must be true; your face is as red as a strawberry!”

Alayne shook her head. It was false that her dreams were about men, but she couldn’t deny that her face was glowing red. Randa continued with her teasing, gesticulating wildly with his hands. “In your dreams, does he caress you gently? Does he cup your face, stroke your lips? Or does he just put his hand in dirty places? A stag on the former you septa.”

Alayne shrieked and hit her bedfellow with her pillow, her exhaustion forgotten. “The septas would call you a harlot!” 

“They would be in the right you know. I am.”

Randa raised her brown brows high and Alayne fancied that she could hear barking laughter in her ear, but Alayne could have never met the owner of that harsh laugh.

“And they say bastard’s blood runs hot,” continued Randa’s teasing. “Since I’m in a betting mood tonight, I bet you’ve never been kissed.”

“I have been kissed,” replied Alayne with icy indignation.

“Our Lord Protector doesn’t count.”

Alayne stilled in fear, scared that somehow Randa or another had witnessed what occurred in the privacy of the Lord Paramount’s solar, but Randa continued in a silly singsong voice. “A kiss on the lips, a lover’s kiss.”

Alyane knew then she was referring to the dutiful pecks she would place on Petyr’s cheek in the private eye.

“Well I have been kissed. Once. Like that.” Alayne spluttered.

“Pray tell my dear” Randa’s eyes glinted, and Alayne knew she must proceed with caution, but also flinched and blushed, glancing around the curtains of the featherbed, anywhere but her acquaintance’s predatory eyes.

“It was just a rushed kiss,” she whispered. “But he was a man, much older than I. I was only on the cusp of womanhood. He was tall. Strong. Not handsome at all. He was a man unused to kindness, both in others and in himself. He scared everyone, and I was scared of him too. But he stole it. The kiss I mean. He pressed his lips to mine and opened his slightly. There was a touch of wetness then he nipped my bottom lip. Not ungently. I knew he would never hurt me.”

She met her bedmate’s eyes. “I still don’t know what to make of it. It makes me feel funny.”

“That sounds absolutely horrid” Randa wrinkled her upturned nose. “He shouldn’t have bothered; you shouldn’t even count it.”

Alayne thought of the other kisses she had endured and wished that she could just not count those kisses either.

“I liked it though,” Sansa insisted, clasping her hands together as she said it, her face burning. 

“Seven heavens above, you might yet become as bad as I!” Randa shrieked. “Do you touch yourself thinking of it?”

“T-touch myself?”                                              

“Touch yourself, frig yourself, have a good old wank?”

“I have to preserve my maidenhead,” Alayne knew that her virtue must not be compromised in anyway, so important it was to Petyr’s plans.

“Don’t you know how a woman takes her pleasure?” Randa laughed. “Such an innocent, your channel is not where you make your pleasure you silly goose.”

Alayne said nothing in response. “I bet your septahouse in Gulltown didn’t teach you this,” Randa sniggered as she threw back the coverlet. “Come on Bastard, I’ll teach you your own anatomy, sit at my feet.”

Alayne obliged her and Randa hitched up her nightclothes to around her hips, exposing short plump legs with a thin smattering of dark hairs. She wasn’t wearing any smallclothes, and when her legs parted, a thatch of curls dimmer than those on her head was revealed. Silently Alayne panicked. If Randa willed her to reciprocate, she would reveal that on her womanhood, she was still another girl.

Neverless, oblivious to Alayne’s perturbation or mistaking it for religious horror, Randa shifted up on her pillows and let the legs fall to either side. Her nether lips could be seen beneath the overhang of hair, two little dark pink wrinkled lips defiantly jutting out of her seam. She shifted on her pillows again to sit more upright, taking a hand and extending two fingers in a ‘v’ shape. She engaged those fingers in parting her lips. “Do you see this junction here bastard? The cleft betwixt my folds?”

Her fingers pressed gently and the folds of flesh exposed a tiny hooded sphere of flesh. “This is your own intimate pearl, where you must touch yourself in order to find release.” Alayne did not voice the fact that the sphere of flesh was a poor imitation of a pearl.

“What does a release feel like?” Alayne blurted.

“Like your muff is hiccupping. It’s a pleasant enough sensation. Sometimes the sensation travels to your toes, down through your legs. When you think of your old man’s kiss, your pearl will stiffen and your lips fill with blood too, so they feel heavier and thicker. Your tummy may feel funny. You’ll get all moist and wet. That’ll be your channel preparing itself for a cock. You see my entrance there?”

Alayne nodded.

“Your entrance will have a veil, but mine doesn’t anymore. Good riddance! When you lose your maidenhead to dearest Harry, your veil will be punctured by his cock. There may be some blood, but allow him to kiss and fondle you and your body will allow him access, to receive him without pain. You might even take pleasure in your deflowering.”

She thought of Tyrion then. She found it unlikely that she could have ever found pleasure in her own wedding bed.

_But how could I ever have such carnal knowledge of Tyrion Lannister? I’ve only ever heard tales of his deformities._

Randa pulled the bed covers back around her and Alayne subserviently snuggled down into the featherbed, exhaustion returning to her.

“If you breath word of this to Mya, I’ll take vengeance, Bastard,” Randa teased. “When you sleep tonight, do you know exactly what you’re going to start? Hrm?” She had that soft teasing voice on again, that kind of sickly sweet voice best suited to patronisation.

Alayne couldn’t quite answer with the truth, so she decided to answer with silence, clutching one of Randa’s childhood dolls to her chest and to fake sleep until it became truth.

She ran with Lady through a field of grass, the colour of autumn yellow. The air was still with the scent of summer, her hair on fire with light. She had never been a good runner like a little girl she had once known, who could run like a beast possessed when the whim took her. Now and then, the silks of her summer dresses tripped her up, but each time she managed to regain her balance before she toppled over. Eventually even sweet, patient Lady became frustrated and with a snarl, tore the bottom of her dress off, baring Sansa to her knees.

“Oh Lady, you naughty girl!” she shrieked, but her heart was not in it. It was much easier to run without tripping up without it. Throwing proprietary to the wind, she ripped her hairpins out to let her hair down, permitting her tresses to stream out behind her, unbrushed. She kicked her silly silk slippers off and began to run with speed and bare feet. Lady howled in jubilation, and in response she screamed and whooped, jumping and twirling the ruined silk of her dress around and around, acting quite the wildling. She took far more delight than a lady should in ruining her attire. They were a gift from Cersei, after all.

_If only I could tear Cersei up so easily_ _._

Then in the distance she spied a small hillock, a tree perched on the very top. She ran towards it, enjoying the muscle burn of her thighs and the feel of the earth beneath her feet. Lady zoomed around her, sprinting loops and barking her encouragement. Running up the hill proved very difficult, but she made it without stopping, and plopped herself down between the giant roots of the tree.

Lady laid by her side, and she stroked her for such a long time Lady stopped panting. Lady was only a fraction of the size she should be, still puppy-fat with large, loving amber eyes. Sansa kissed her on her nose and then buried her own nose into Lady’s crown. She took breaths there, inhaling Lady’s sweet beastly scent, and then, with trepidation, reached out and _bridges_.

She enters Lady, and she tastes death.

She feels the chill of steel through her neck and the cruel reduction of old age, the blaze of fire and the purge of plague. At the same time a childbed fever burns her up from the inside, loin first. A dagger lunges into her tummy and digs upwards, stirring up her guts as the same dagger slashes open her throat. She’s raped a million times to a million deaths by a million men. She tries to breath, but her throat closes and her desperate screams turn into wheezes. The rains of Castamere screech as arrows thud into her chest.

She dies thirsty.

She dies hungry.

She dies shitting.

She feels the swell of a thousand sorrows and hurls herself off ledges and cliffs, battlements and precipices. She spends months sowing stones into her gowns, and throws herself into rivers, lakes and seas. Her last breath bubbles before her own eyes and floats to a surface she’ll never see again.

Her sinuses swarm with maggots, her abdomen bloats with stinking gas. Her eyes are taken by crows, and her flesh reserved for vultures. Insects lay their eggs in the flesh that was once her pretty teats and her body swarms with unwelcome life. The scavengers find her, bears and foxes worry at her bloated limbs. Her bones are scattered and picked dry.

Winter comes.

Bastard born Alayne is thwarted, and Sansa Stark reigns.

Winter is a time for wolves.

* * *

 

She awoke to a maid called Getty cooling her brow with a wet cloth, under the instruction of maester Colemon. Littlefinger was called for at once. Whilst waiting for her faux father, she sipped a little bit of thin beef consume and made sense of what had occurred whilst she was dreaming. They had not moved her from the room, and had set up sickbed in Randa’s own featherbed upon discovering her in the morning. The sheets had been changed and Randa’s personal effects removed from the room. Only the garish tapestries with the blooming red flowers remained. 

 Whilst she waited for Littlefinger, Maester Coleman and Getty told how her body had gone as stiff as a board, and that Randa’s doll had been wrenched from her arms by three maids. Her fever had been blatant, and in her sleep she had been spooned tonics for strength, and leached. She has been confined for nine days.

Randa burst into the room first, fussing over her and even sobbing a little. Sansa was touched by such a display of genuine relief and said a few kind words, even jesting that Randa’s gossip was far too powerful for a maid like her. Mya smiled broadly, her hand warm on Sansa's, quiet and peaceful. 

From Randa she learns both Mya and Randa had visited her in the sickbed and prayed for her in the sept. Harry had avoided the sickbed, but had made a show of praying for her. Sweetrobin had been extremely troubled by her absence, and blamed his naughtiness with the porridge for her illness.

Littlefinger by all accounts was very distressed by the thought of losing his pretty daughter. Randa gossiped that Littlefinger had presented himself at breakfasts with bags under his eyes and was prone to spending far more time alone in his solar than ever before.

Sansa knew better, that it was distress from the thought of a plot being thwarted by an unanticipated threat, of a lack of control. It was small consolation that the thought of losing her as a pawn was enough for Littlefinger to lose sleep. 

When he came to visit her, he clung to her fingers with a sort of clinging desperation, like a drowning sailor clinging to shipwreck. In the view of the maids he kissed her forehead, but when he dismissed them to converse in private, he kissed her full on the mouth. He had kissed her long on the mouth before but never had he pushed her lips apart and forced his tongue to lick along her clenched teeth.

How sweet it would be to open those teeth to chomp down on that lecherous tongue. But she endured the flood of mint that entered her mouth, weak hands flying to Littlefinger’s shoulders.

“My Lord,” she weakly murmured, feeling faint and cursing her weakness. “I need to recuperate.”

She met his eyes then and sung a pretty song. “You must not catch my illness Petyr. I’m relying on you.” She forced a silly weak smile onto her face until she thought that she looked as if she were glowing with happiness. “I’m so happy to see you,” she lied.

His eyes lit up and he stroked her hair as if he were stroking a kitten. “I’ve been neglecting you. Has the care of Sweetrobin been too strenuous?”

She shook her head from side to side, ensuring so exaggerate the sway of her body, the limpness of her neck.  “I am capable of what you judge me capable.”

She forced her hands to reach out hers and grasp his. “These things are out of our control. Do not allow this blame to fall upon yourself.” She steeled herself and lifted one of his hands, ghosting a kiss over his knuckles. “I know what is at stake. I am safe here. I know who I have to thank for that.”

_I am only as safe here you will me to be. But you are not noble enough to save me from yourself._

She continued, gazing deeply into his green eyes before continuing to turn her head into the pillow. “I must look appalling.”

_Better he think me vain, he certainly is._

“I do not wish you to see me like this.”

_Better he think me attracted to him._

“Return to your work, to our survival. Let me return to recovery. I will recover stronger for you, and your duties.”

_Better he think me striving for him, to see me as a willing accomplice._

“That you will,” he murmurs into her cheek, kissing her cheek for a moment too long before he left her room.

She made sure to convalesce for more than a sennight, to allow her to chastise Littlefinger for visiting her, bidding him to work for her survival with a teasing smile.

But after her convalescence came to an end and she returned to her duties she came to realise that this encouragement was a misstep on her part. Although, judging by his lust upon her awakening, her additional mummery was unlikely to have encouraged him to the excess the thought of losing her had. Neverless, Alayne was called to her Father’s solar more oft than she had ever before.

His attentions had intensified and more often than not, she found herself perched on his lap. His hands would cling like weed, reaching both upward to cup her teats and downward to trace her groin through her skirts. His kisses became wet and wetter. It became harder to protest against him, to stall.

He began to give her beautiful dresses, women’s dresses, under the pretence of entrancing Harry.

She knew better. Often the dresses would be far too low cut, or the fabric too sheer. Some of the dresses had exotic slits up the side to display the wearer’s legs, or would be so tight the cleft of her buttocks could be seen through the skirt.

She resisted, installing modesty panelling when the dress exposed too much bosom. When the fit of the skirt was scandalously tight, she would slit the front and install layering of petticoats to flare the shape of the dress. Much the same with the dresses with slits, where she installed skirts that flash with colour where her legs should be. She had less use for the sheer dresses, but employed them for layering in the cold winter weather, shifts and camisoles to be used under modest dresses.

When Littlefinger finally does ask her why she alters his gifts so, palming her left breast through a bodice so thick she can hardly feel his small hands, she softly murmurs that it was her mother’s winter style, and that she thought that would please him the best.

He makes a soft, slimy noise of contentment and Sansa has to restrain herself from retching.

As the winter deepened with his ardour, she began to swaddle herself in fabrics, to resist both his advances and the penetrating cold. But instead of feeling safe in her swaddling layers, she became a present to be unwrapped, a knot of rich fabrics. With every barrier, his anticipation was heightened. He is a man who enjoys these games.

In the day she wears Alayne like a glove. But in the quiet of the night, she discards Alayne like a dragonfly discarding its cocoon. Littlefinger plays and positions her like a porcelain doll, but she fancies herself the steel of a dagger. Her true Father told her that playing with knives was dangerous folly.

She begins a habit of scheming in the hour of the wolf. Thus, the assembled cast of Littlefinger’s troupe at the gates of the moon.

Sweetrobin first. Her greatest ally. A child possessing eight namedays. Prone to fits, and medicated with sweetsleep mixed into milk. Easy to manipulate with tall tales of valour and courage, just as she was. He seeks a mother and only finds Alayne. No true power.

Lothor Brune. A knight owning much to Littlefinger, including his elevation in social status, and most-like gold. He takes a fancy in Mya Stone. If she were to encourage Mya to consider Lothor, could she steal the burly knight? Or is Lothor owned by Littlefinger through-and-through? He is a gamble that she is unlike to win despite his amiability.

Corbrey is riskier. Petyr has promises, boys and gold to offer. There is only one thing that she thinks that a man like him could be tempted by. There is a breed of second son that can be motivated by the possessions of the elder. But she is unable to legitimately make that offer, here the scales are tilted in Littlefinger’s favour.

Lady Waynwood is a mystery. She seeks to make alliance with Littlefinger through the marriage of her ward. Alayne is bastard born, but is also the inheritor of the Riverlands if legitimised. Does she seek to expand Harry’s estate? Or is she motivated by the fact that Littlefinger must provide an undisclosed dowry for Alayne? It must take quite an amount to overlook Alayne’s low status. Unreliable.

Considering the roster of Royces, Randa is a good and jolly friend, but has little power over her Lord Father. Nestor Royce has proved himself incalculable, but could be swayed by a good marriage to Randa. Again. Unreliable. Their distant cousin Yohn supported Robb in the war. However, that war is lost now, the King in the North long dead, his bones scattered. In addition, she is a woman, and he an older man, set in his ways. Would he obey her order, or would she find herself in yet another cage? If he does possess the forces to incapacitate Littlefinger in a coup, could he turn on her? She observes him most closely to ascertain if he could be an ally.

But for all her analysis, her weaving and planning oft feels for naught. She understands the theoretical concept of playerhood, but finds that she lacks the opening, the weak thread to be picked at. There are miserable plays that she kicks herself for missing, damning her passivity.

One night, she bumped into Yohn Royce unattended and made smalltalk. She very nearly began to disclose who she really was, heart fluttering like a bat.

_Didn’t name you for your capacity to fly. Doubt even you’d be pretty after a fall from the moondoor_ rasps in her ear.

 She makes her excuses and leaves for her chambers. Slowly and carefully, she closed her door, barring it from the inside. She lit three candles around her chambers, then bathed her face. She let her hair down then brushed one hundred times. She applied a soft citrus lavender oil to her roots, and examined for tell-tale auburn hairs.

She stood up.

Then she flung herself face-first onto her bed and screamed into her pillow. The pillow absorbed her cries into sad little muffled noises. She wept a little until she ceased. This was common routine, and often made her feel a little better about her circumstances when in fact she hadn’t done anything to change her fate.

She puffed out her cheeks and looked up to her headboard, too angry to sleep.

And then her hand was pressed to the junction of her legs.

Had she landed in this position? She hadn’t placed her hand there on purpose.

Still. Her hand was splayed palm down, the knuckle of her third finger pressed to the very beginning of her seam.

Septa Mordane had once stuffily informed her not to touch herself there, lest her virtue be compromised. But Septa Mordane was long dead and Randa had informed her that a woman’s seat of pleasure wouldn’t affect the physical reality of her maidenhead.

She had always presumed that the pleasure of being bedded would be inside her, accessible only with the aid of her husband. The fact that the seat of her pleasure laid on her exterior, and that she had not known it all this time was a surprise.

Harry and Lady Waynwood wanted her maidenhead true, but pleasuring herself needn’t cause her maidenhood’s rupture. She considered for a moment that Harry may dislike her entering the marriage bed with such carnal knowledge, but she doubted Harry would kick up a fuss. He had obviously figured out how to achieve such a release whilst fathering his bastards.

In contempt of them all, she rolled her hips against her hand and that central finger. There was something there, some spark of feeling, but it was dull. She was swaddled in too many skirts.

She checked to make sure that she had indeed barred the door, then proceeded to pull up her skirts and cast off her small clothes, lying back down in the same position. She could feel the pelt of her womanhood against her hand. 

It was almost perverse, the knowledge that down there, she was definitely still auburn Sansa Stark.

She repeated the motion of her hips once, twice, three times until she felt the sweet start of something.

She turned around and checked the door and room again, aware that if anyone were to come in, they would see her pale white bottom bobbing up and down.

_It would be very hard to explain my_ _way out of that._

Nobody was there, and she didn’t stop. She used her knees to lift her bottom up higher and flipped over her hand so that her fingers could scramble for the pearl Randa told her about. The first few moments of searching did not bear fruit, but she enjoyed the friction. Finally growing frustrated with half-sensation she pushed her other hand down to part her lips and found the elusive pearl.

The first touch made her body quiver and her hands spasm. She lost her place and had to fumble to find her nub again. Before she doid so, she reached down further and caressed the entrance to her opening, the place where a man would find his own alien pleasure, within her.

For a moment she thinks of Tyrion’s ugly purple manhood.

_No. I will not think of that here. I will not._

Then she thought of how likely she elicits the same response in Littlefinger when she allows him to fondle her over clothes. He had never raised as much as his little finger during her captivity in the Red Keep, but she knows too well his little finger definitely raises for her now in the secluded gates of the moon.

_That too. Begone._

This is her bedchamber, and this is her featherbed. Here she can dream her wolf dreams and fantasise and fetishize the fantasy of a man loving her for who she is. No claim. No beauty maybe. Certainly not her likeness to another. Her frustration mounted and her temper flared and she touched herself with incensed abandon.

She smelt the smoke and salt on the air. She ruminates upon the pressure a large man has and could exert on her body. She smells him, his clean smells of leather, lye soap and earnest sweat. Her fingers cramp. She remembers the stenches of battle and booze and vomit. Her fingers manipulate harder. The pressure of a dagger is imagined at her neck, and then, tracing downwards, betwixt the valleys of her breasts. She recalls a prayer for mercy. And then there is a wetness that is not blood.

_There is a wetness._

Her fingers work as fast as she can make them. She finds that terror can subside and collapse, and at the foundations, hidden, other sensations can be found.

She recalls a kiss and she is furious, her fingers cruel but not enough to pull her into the wanton pulsings Margery’s cousins tittered about and Myanda described so crudely.

With a moan she pulls her dress up over her head and sits up naked, kneeling as if she were at prayer, but splaying her legs open. She found a substitute for her fingers in her pillow, dragging herself up and down the cushion.

The friction was delicious but not enough as she had anticipated until she rearranged herself, lining the rough cording of the edging of the pillow against her bud. She slid back and forth, one hand holding the pillow in position, the other palming her breast with a hand too small. The sensation she had laboured to build was growing into something bigger, a coil tightening in the bowl of her tummy, causing her body to sweat and her breath to come in little laboured pants.

She yearned for the second son of house Clegane.

Then she cracked into light and opened to the blindness. She forgot to breath. She forgot everything.

The cages shatter around her.

Of all the deaths she has known, this is the sweetest.

* * *

 

She returns to Alayne in the morn, but instead of attending Sweetrobin, Littlefinger calls her to observe how he welcomes orders of the faith to the keep.

She orders the servants to make preparations for this order, to give these men a watered down pale ale and steaming hot peasant pottage. She orders that every man be allowed a starchy pastry filled with fried onion and potato, but very little meat. When these arrangements are met, she glides into the candlelit hall and beside her faux father. She looks demurely at the waxed oak floor as Littlefinger describes her upbringing in a septahouse, her devotion to the seven, but more importantly, his pride to host the order for fair work.

She looks up and sees around fifteen men, ranging from small to large and young to old. All look healthy to work and pleased by the fire, promises of food and work. She welcomes them with a modest little smile and asks after their journey. 

All through she can feel Petyr’s stare in her back, like a performer tumbling on a tightrope, never falling.

“Is this all of you?” she asks.

“There is but one more of us, he is putting the horses to stable. He has taken a vow of silence and wears his hood and facial wrappings. But do not mind him. He is a gravedigger, fit for manual labour, strong as an ox,” replies the representative member of the order, the only one who speaks.

She hears a soft shuffling nose behind her, and turns. There is a buzzing swell in her breast, for her breath falls short, and she turns around to see the limping brother entering the hall. Noises faltered and fell away from her, as if a pair of bear fur ear-muffs had been clamped over her ears.

She knows him before she sees his face, knows that when the hood is castoff and the scarf discarded, the face underneath will be dark, strong and stern, his nose hooked, and his brow heavy. He would be long past youth, but far from great age.

When his eyes meet hers, his steel gaze is harsh, but never cruel. 

He knows her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. I'm new to the fandom and this is the first time in four years that I've written. Naturally after getting drawn into the Pawn to Player threads over at ASOIAF and devouring as much fanfiction as possible, I've decided to contribute my own thoughts. I'm absolutely brand new, so I don't have a beta yet. 
> 
> You probably noticed the picture I've used up at the top. That's a work of Gustav Klimt's that was finished in 1909. It's called Judith II or Salome. Although the painting is supposed to depict the biblical characters of Judith and Salome (superimposed onto one another) clutching the hair on the head of Holofernes, whom she has just decapitated, to my own eyes I think this is a good match to the dichotomy of Alayne and Sansa (despite the fact Holofernes is a bloke, but that's pretty hard to see). Alayne is present, dominant, and well, miserable (I mean, look at that face). She's dressed in glamorous silks and wears expensive jewelry, but is still vulnerable to the unwanted sexual advances of Littlefinger, as symbolised by the exposed breasts. The memory of Sansa is slipping through her fingers. If she doesn't clench her fingers, she is in the very real danger of losing Sansa forever.
> 
> Thank you again!


	2. Flight

_**ii.Flight** _

He avoids her like greyscale.

First, she thinks he is being discreet, that he plays the game like her. The moment she saw him she thought that soon she would receive some kind of message indicating an illicit rendezvous. A number of days fly by, Sweetrobin occupying the day, and Littlefinger far too deep into her nights. Her anticipation slowly dims, and her hope dies.

Even in the tiny garrison, he seems to disappear into ether.  The sheer number of people residing in the fortress eased his efforts. So many of the Lords Declarant had swarmed to Littlefinger’s makeshift court in the wake of the successful tourney. Littlefinger’s wealth and generosity had accumulated abundant food to feed the Vale through the hard winter.

She had conversed with the speaking representative of the religious order the Hound now belonged to. The Elder brother had informed her that they were from a colony on the Quiet Isle. The winter and subsequent starvation had caused them to seek shelter and work.  Sansa knew that this meant that news had spread of Littlefinger feeding the Vale, and sending aid to the commons.

Though the Lords Declarant despaired of Littlefinger, the commons loved him. He was often regarded as the only good thing Lady Lysa had ever done for the Vale. The Elder Brother had informed her that the commons called him “Lord Bread”. Should a coup be attempted, a peasant’s revolt seemed likely to occur.

Second, she fears that he has forgotten her. Or that her disguise and physical growth had altered her so drastically that he hadn’t recognised her. Alternatively, whatever had happened in her chambers in Kings Landing had been lost in his drunkenness.

She discards that thought. She knew that he had seen her. Her eyes did not lie. She felt sure that even through the mire of drunkenness, the night of blackwater would be imprinted on her psyche, just as much as it was for her.  She had felt his tears and his large body had trembled. She had tasted his lips. If he was sober enough to leave Kings Landing alive, he was sober to remember.

_Anyhow. The Hound can sniffs out liars like he can sniff out wineskins of Dornish Sour. The Gates of the Moon must reek with my stench, liar that I am now._

Third. She fears that he cannot possibly be the Hound.

_The hound would never flee from me._

But it becomes more and more blatant. If she enters a room, he leaves. He is hardly present at dinners, but when she does spy him, he takes his rations quickly and stomps off to eat in private. She reassured herself at first, he can hardly eat without removing his scarf, and if he were to do that, his identity would be compromised. But if he were to come close to her in a corridor he flinched from her. Even if she were in the same room he would remove himself as soon as possible. 

Fourth. She feared that he was so repulsed by the liar she had become he couldn't stand her presence. 

* * *

 It was not until she cornered him in the Sept that she finally has the chance to talk to him. She had absconded from Littlefinger’s solar and chosen to prostate herself before the maiden. Her prayers to the Maiden were to still Littlefinger advances and dampen his libido, although the deity proved largely ineffective.

She entered the sept quietly, slipping through the double doors. The doors were most ostentatious, and her favourite feature of the sept. The panels were made of the dark pine that grew on the slopes of the Giant’s Lance, varnished until shiny. The door was plain but for the two large moons, embedded mother of pearl. When the mother of pearl shimmered in the torchlight, all the colours of the rainbow glinted. The sept itself was small and pokey, but had characteristic sculptures and smelt heavily of incense.

The Father had a great big bushy beard, and the Mother massive teats. The Maiden had an extremely sly, Randa Royce-like look on her face, whilst the Stranger was so swathed in fabrics it looked like it was a blob, rather than a representation of death. The warrior was supposed to look stern and vicious, but the sculptor had only achieved making him look constipated. The representation of the Crone was extremely hag-like, unlike the grandmotherly figure most Septs procured. The Smith was the only competently carved, and Sansa couldn’t critique the depiction.

He knelt in front of the candle-lit hag, his wide back hunched and drooping as if he were wearily carrying a great burden on his shoulders. She watched him then, for a little moment that grew into a large moment. He swayed a little, favoured a side because of the injury that makes him limp. His breath was the loudest thing she had ever heard.  It echoed around and around her head whilst she tried to think what magical combination of words she can utter. Witty remarks. Japes. Silly little chirpings.

All fell short.

She said nothing and walked the three, four steps to collapse next to him. Her footsteps echoed and her knees thudded when she collapsed next to him.

He started, broken out of his reverie, and made to bolt from her yet again.

“Please,” she whined. “Don’t go. Not now. Not again.” Her voice sounded wrong. It sounded scratchy and desperate and terribly, terribly bastard Alayne.

He stilled in his motion, but his shoulders were rounded. He looked around then too, as if he were checking that he wasn’t cornered, but his movements were almost purposefully slow. His gaze was focused on her then, and she was caught in his vehement glare. It made her feel cold and naked, and terribly ashamed of her bastard garb and dyed hair.

She faltered. She clasped her hands and unclasped them. Her mouth opened and closed.

His countenance was as cold and icy as the Wall. Impenetrable.

Her anxiety bubbled inside her, and before she knew it she was hiccupping with nervous laughter. She tried to calm herself and fall back into regimented discipline, but the giggles erupted until they lapsed into tittering and she could cover her mouth with her hands.

She wished she could smother herself then, for he remained silent as the grave.

_He must think me mad as a bat._

Finally she composed herself into silence, and attempted to drink him in like he did her, to meet his gaze without being the one to flinch away.

“Every night since, I have regretted not leaving with you,” she whispered in her broken bastard voice. “I’m leaving this cage. Can you slip your leash?”

Again she started tittering at her stupid jape and hated herself for it instantly, but the words slipped out of her like eels, writhing.

“The scales are weighed against me. This is a mummer’s farce. I cannot take control of this situation. This game cannot be won by me. The only means of survival without significant loss is to remove myself from the board. All they want me for is my claim.”

She shook then, much like Sweetrobin’s fitting, and began to weep. The nervousness and scare of the situation had settled deep into her bones. “You promised me.”

He started and shook his head violently, causing her to jump. He had been as still as a statue and it made her jump with fright.

Tears were streaming down her face now, and in the most un-ladylike manner, snot was dripping down into her mouth. She could taste the mucus mixing with salt. She snorted and began to wipe her face with her hands. “You promised me you would keep me safe. You did. You did! How could you forget?”

Then his large hand was at her face. He used the cuff of his rough woollen cowl to dab at her face. When the tears were wiped from her eyes, she appraised his hand. It was marred with many little white scars, like the work of an eclectic spider.  He mopped at her mouth and pinched the snot from her nose with surprising gentility for a man of his size.

Then the fear of incorrect identification seized her heart again. What if this was but an innocent member of the faith, a terribly confused brown brother? What if the brown brother told the representative and the representative told Littlefinger to curry favour? What would happen to her then?

She cupped his covered face like she had before, the scrape of fabric heavy against her palm. His taut exhale and inhale could he felt through the thin fabric. She moved her hand upward, and allowed her fingertips a faery-touch trace of his brow. He recoiled again.  Delicately, like collaring a scared dog, she hooked her index finger under his scarf and pulled it down.

It fell down lopsided, caught on his right ear. On his left hand side, there was only the start of a stump, and the scarf met no resistance. His face was naked to her.

_So dark._

_So stern._

_So Strong._

_But so terrible._

The mists of time had altered her perception of his face. She had made him more handsome in her dreamings, given him a noble face. It was a cruel reminder. The left side of his face looked like rotten meat, broken and oozing, blackened leather in some places, mottled with red and pink craters in others. There was no pattern to this fissured motley.  The disfigurement extended from his neck to scalp. A white hint of his mandible could be seen projecting from his face.  Before his hair had been worn long, swept to the side to conceal as much as possible. Now his hair was tightly drawn back, and he was exposed.

He had closed his eyes tight, pensive.

“Look at me,” she commanded.

His breath hitched, and he obeyed.

She met his gaze and with shaking hand traced her thumb down his hooked nose. She dipped her little finger into the bowl of his philtrum, strong on one side, barely determinable on the other. She traced his lips and pressed on the twitching corner. He mimicked her then, reaching the corner of her mouth with a gentle thumb, resting on the corner.

 _He knows as much of I as I do him_ she realised, flicking her eyes downwards to his heavy thumb. He immediately moved. Some unknown instinct made her quicker. She opened her mouth and caught his thumb between her teeth, meeting his gaze as she closed her lips and suckled. She could taste the salt of her tears upon him.

He made a noise that sounded like hissing. The expression on his face slackened. His eyes darkened and his irises grew large.

Her tongue met him then, covering the pad of his thumb and tracing the blunted edge of his nail.

He whipped his hand out, quick as if he had been bunt.

“The fuck,” he snarled, his voice deeper and hoarser than she remembered, like steel meeting stone. His face twisted from stupefaction to anger in an instant.

She felt brazen and wanton, but she didn’t feel shame, nor did she avert her eyes like a modest maid. She felt bastard brave and wolf blooded. The wolf blood was hot, and heavy. It made her heart beat fast and her face grow red. She felt drunk on lust, swollen and engorged, her tummy tight and heavy.

He owed her a debt, a kiss debt, a lover’s kiss debt.

She staked her claim.

She kissed him with the ferocity he afforded her at the Blackwater Battle, opening her mouth on first contact, working the corner of his mouth that twitched. Though it looked unpleasant, the odd texture of the ruined lip was almost like the peel of a citrus fruit, his taste not foul.

_Why is it that the most beautiful things are a veneer to rottenness whilst the ugliest ruin proves sweet? I know that my kiss will not make him handsome._

He drew back and made eye contact yet again. His face was tumult with fleeting expressions. Anger. Confusion. Rage. Revolt. Revulsion. Lust. Another strange noise emitted from him, a kind of cry that sounded quashed, strangled. Almost like he was choking back tears.

_I don’t want him handsome._

He grabbed her wrists hard then, his grip was iron. She was yanked against his chest and his mouth covered hers, tongue probing and pushing in. She rolled her own in response against his, wrestling in the only way she thought she might conquer him. She tasted the edges of his teeth, the roof of his palate, his moans in her mouth. Then his grip tightened harder again, and the intimacy ended abruptly with a shove.

A string of saliva hung glinting silver in the candle-light before snapping between them. He wiped the slobber from around his mouth with the cuff of his robe. All the while he watched her like a threat.

His anger sparked again.

“Look at you now,” his voice was cruel, maybe crueller than she had ever heard it. “Look at you. Lady Lannister, and Littlefinger’s most prized whore. You’ve fallen low. Mean to control me too with your cunt?”

His spittle sprayed her, and she baulked. For a moment, she was the scared little girl caught in the middle of a siege.

_Oh Gods._

_Oh Gods._

_He has never kissed me._

His face was ugly and unreadable.

_I fabricated it. I was a little girl trying to make sense of big adult emotions. I stitched and wove this little lie because it was prettier than real life. That night was terrifying. He was terrifying._

_But I still imagined a stolen kiss._

She could hear the grinding of the teeth she had licked but a moment ago.

_I told myself I kissed him because I wanted to be kissed by him. Now I have stolen that._

She read his expression clear as day then, and read it as humiliation. He began to howl again. “What have you done? What have you done? You play a foolish farce with me, girl. I will not allow this—“

“Your determination to see yourself so miserable is most commendable,” she snarled like a shadowcat, silencing him with severity. “To see a man such as you so unhinged by a mere kiss. S-so determined to make everything perverse and ill. You’ve shamed me.” She wobbled to her feet and in anger swiped at the candle he had lit for the Crone, sending it to clatter on the floor.

“You whore and consort with the man who arranged your Father’s execution and yo—“

“W-what? What?” Her heart stopped and she could feel her face fall into shock. Even he, full of anger and vitriol could see the shock spreading across her face. “Little bird—“he began, humiliation falling into humility.

“What?” she screeched over him, her stomach turning with mint-sweeted bile. She wanted to retch and felt faint with horror.

“Little bird,” he repeated, with forced softness, but she could no longer stand the scent and claustrophobia of the sept, or the man in front of her, and the mixture of sensations he aroused in her.

But she had had enough of him. “I am no bird; no cage ensnares me. I am a free human being with independent will, which I now exert to leave you,” she spat and fumed.

She left the Sept, face reddened by the brutality of her raw anger and the sting of rejection. When she was little, she had always supposed that her beauty would ensure her happiness; that rejection was only for people who were plain or ugly like Arya. People who were beautiful were happy. They led better lives. She had thought that she was protected from the indignities that others had to endure.

But life was not a song.

And Littlefinger had omitted some very important facts from her. His omission was enough proof of complicity and guilt. He loved to gloat to her of his victories. Her anger was bubbling up and she felt like she were to explode there and then.

She realised then that she had forgotten to attend Sweetrobin, and needed to ensure that he fell asleep.

She uttered a foul string of curses under her breath.

She imagined a door, Strong oak. Iron nails. She imprisoned the second son of House Clegane behind it like she had so many other things, and barred it shut until she had the privacy to think.

Then she slipped Alayne on like a well-worn stocking and came to Sweetrobin’s suite of rooms, finding the child ill-settled and disgruntled. His lateness distressed him greatly, acting this naughtiness with a certain brand of spoiled childish petulance. She read him three different stories and still he refused to slumber.

_Never have I wanted to cane a child more than I have tonight._

Making her excuses, (and wishing to remove herself from the room as soon as possible) she made to find Maester Coleman, who could always be found close to Sweetrobin’s quarters. He was quickly found.

“Maester Coleman, Sweetrobin refuses to sleep. Could he have more sweetsleep to ease his slumber?”

Maester Coleman, a man of little stature, chin and far too much neck looked as sternly as he could at her. He looked so much like a chicken it would have been laughable any other night.

“I daren’t give him anymore my lady, he’s had more than enough this week. It lingers in the flesh. Better that he has a break for this moment.”

A bell rang in her ear, the kind of warning bell used for alerting castles and town of fire within the walls.

“Is sweetsleep dangerous?  I thought it a natural remedy?”

“Sweetsleep is natural my lady, just are digitalis and nightshade. Both will kill quickly.  Too much and the lungs, they flood.” Maester Coleman shook his head sadly. “A pity we are so reliant on it at all.”

The room span and there was a moment where black dots danced on her vision. She had always presumed that Sweetrobin’s death would be natural, a result of ill health. He was a sickly child.

_And how his passing could be quickened with so much ease._

She made her leave to Maester Coleman, informing him that she did not have knowledge, and that she would keep all requests to a minimum. On returning to the child he asked her for the sweetmilk, but instead she hugged him with a deep guilt burning in her bosom.

“I’ve decided that the milk will not be decided. I was wrong to be late and my mind has been detached recently. Let us share lots of tales and stories and the bed too.” She kissed the top of his head and ruffled his hair like she would Rickon’s.

She told her stories and even sang. She listened to his confessions. She didn’t rebuke his claims of people wanting him dead. It felt wrong to deny him his worries, especially if they proved to be true.

She allowed the child to borrow into her bosom, although she sternly told him not to try to suckle. Spoilt child though he was, he did not deserve death any more than Rickon or Bran. When he was asleep, she pretended that he were Arya. When she were little, the sisters would share a bed, until the fighting between them grew. In the dark, she could pretend that Sweetrobin’s long hair was Arya’s. She imagined Arya squirming if she told her that she had kissed the hound that she had fantasised until she had convinced herself real. And then she had made it real! She imagined that Arya would laugh and giggle knowing that the Hound had hardly known how to respond.

She wondered what Arya would have done had she found herself so ensnared by Littlefinger.

Sleep took her.

She sat with Lady under the Oak tree on top of the hillock in the autumn coloured meadow.

Her Lady’s eyes were dull with grief.

“Where do I go from here?” she asked the wolf.

Lady looked out to the horizon, and Sansa followed her gaze. Then the environment altered and shifted until she was flying high.  She viewed the land like viewing a map, mountains turning to rivers. After meeting towns and villages she met a great castle, bigger and grander than Winterfell. She blinked and it was burnt, the towers black with soot and melted.

She turned from the awful sight and turned south over a lake so vast, it almost appeared a sea. Mists appeared on the horizon. Before she knew it, she was zooming through those claustrophobic mists, drenching her feathers so wet it became harder and harder to fly.

Land was spied ahead of her, a thin strip of island, covered with luscious greenery. She entered the canopy and flitted from branch to branch. The forest made no sense. Pines, sycamore, Hemlock, ash, beech. Oak, cedar, chestnut and cypress. Too much variation, incorrect species for the Riverlands.

She came down to the ground then. Every single tree had a face. Some were quiet, some angry. There were faces that scared Sansa and some that made her laugh, the faces were so jovial. Out of the corner of her eye, she spied the red leaves of a weirwood.

She turned to look at the weirwood’s face. It was strong and stern, dark and terrible. His eyes were closed, at rest, and weirwood sap glistened where the burns were. He looked like he was sleeping, peaceful, happy even, or as happy as he could actually be.

“There? The isle of faces?” she whispered, returning to the tree with a sickening jolt and turning to her wolf. Where Lady had sat there was only snow, and Sansa was alone.

Winter had come, bittercold and the golden field was now white. The oak tree was dead behind her. She was naked. Her moonblood was upon her, streaming down her thighs.

When she stood up, the imprint of her buttocks were marked with blood. She walked down to the meadow, trying her best to cover her nakedness and shame, shivering with cold.

She saw her father then, carrying his tarred head in his hands. Robb was there too, arrows embedded in his torso. He too carried his head. Greywind’s took occupancy where his should have been, attached by poor stitches. Her mother stood there too, river bloated with her throat slit.

“Come to me,” she whispered in a voice that squelched. “And I will give you your inheritance, your crown.”

The voice froze her more than the biting cold. Sansa saw the foul creature’s eyes and knew that the abominable being inside her mother’s shell was not the woman she had loved. She walked past her, bracing herself for the burnt bodies of her younger brothers. But they did not appear to her. Instead she saw another body appear from the mists. It was her bastard brother Jon. His tunic was slashed to ribbons, many times, and blood was everywhere, on his torso, his hands, and around his mouth.  “Mutiny,” he gasped. “Mutiny.”

She awoke to the scramblings of Sweetrobin. He was attempting to open her ties and free her breasts. She pushed him away.

“What did I say Sweetrobin?” she lectured.

“I’m the Lord of the Vale, and I can do what I want.” The child replied with characteristic peevishness.

She fixed her eyes on him with a maester’s sternness. “You are the Lord of the Vale, it’s true. You’re also a very naughty little boy.”

For a moment the boy seemed to want to rebuke her, but to her surprise he looked very guilty. “I’m sorry Alayne. I know you don’t like it. I just miss mother. I know you are not her but I like to pretend that you are. So she feels close to me.” He whimpered, a sad little noise.

Sansa sighed. “Oh Robin.” She brushed the hair out of his eyes with a tenderness she had forgotten that she had possessed.

_If I can ensure this child to grow into a man, old enough and wise enough to rule, he could be my greatest ally._

“Don’t do it again, or I’ll be less inclined to share your bed again, or read you stories. I need respect in order to love in return. That goes for your Lady wife come the future too. “

“Mother didn’t put a price on her love” the spoilt child was there again.

“You were but a babe. There are rules to everything in this world. Would you have done something to sadden her, so make her upset or comfortable?”

He shook his head.

“You cannot force someone’s affection no more than you can make Alyssa’s tears flow upwards, Lord or no.”

She kissed his forehead and held him tight. “Robin?”

“Yes Alayne?”

“Us two, you and I. We’re in the centre of a vortex. I’ve told you about them before yes? Dafyd the Tideknight fighting the Kraken? He beached it in the centre of a vortex?”

“That’s a Riverlands tale. I prefer the Winged Knight.”

“You do remember it then. Remember how I told you that around them, the whirlpool shifted? That the water would have been calamitous? But in the center Dafyd was safe, on the riverbed, but he had to keep on moving so he wouldn’t be caught into the whirlpool’s currents.”

He nodded vigorously.

“You and I, we’ve been in this safe centre for some time now. We’ve been kept safe but the vortex will eventually pick us up. We can’t fight it, how times change. There will be chaos. Loss. Many things will occur. You won’t always feel safe or loved. But I want you to know something. I will protect you. I’ll anchor you down as much as I can. I can’t promise you safety or happiness. But I’ll try my best to look after you. You won’t understand what I am doing, but I promise you, do not doubt me. You are my kin. I will not suffer another loss from my blood.”

The child trembled and for a moment she was worried that she had induced a fit in him. “Alayne, you’re scaring me.”

“Better I tell you the truth. Would you prefer that I lie to you and leave you for lost?”

“No.”

“Good.” She extended her little finger towards him. “Promise me you will not tell Lord Petyr that I have said this speech to you. He keeps secrets from us both.”

He swore.

“Promise to me that you will not tell any other person, living or dead. This is between you and me, no others”

He swore. “Lord Baelish scares me. I don’t much remember mine, but I suspect that he wasn’t like that at all.”

“No. I always heard that Lord Arryn was a good man. Loyal and clever. But I suspect that Lord Baelish isn’t like that at all. In fact, I suspect that that he is a very, very bad man.”

“Do you wish that I could make him fly? I could do that for you Alayne, I would.” His eagerness to please was almost adorable, like a little puppy.

“Right now, you can’t. You won’t Robin. The repercussions would be too much right now. It would hurt us both, pull us into the whirlpool and drown us. But I plan to make it so that you can. When Lord Royce calls for his execution that will be the right time to move against him. It’ll be a message from me.”

“You won’t be here to tell me yourself?”

“A man has to grow into being a man. I cannot whisper into your ear and tell you what to do. You will be your own Lord, your own ruler. Fear not, I will return and visit you.”

He measured her words carefully. “How will you prosper without your Father? Kinslaying is abhorred by the Seven. Isn’t that bad, Alayne?”

She held him tighter. “I’m not a bastard at all. I’m certainly not Lord Baelish’s. I’m a princess he has kidnapped and imprisoned as his daughter. I’m your cousin, Sansa Stark. And you, Robin? You will free us both.”

He gasped and looked at her in amazement.

She had just made her first play.

* * *

 

She begins to prepare for her flight from the Gates.

She engages Harry more eagerly, to Littlefinger’s distain. Together they ride though the snowy pine forests of the Giant’s Lance. She learns to love the thrill of the ride and improves her seat in the saddle. She informs him how masculine and attractive his hunting skills are, and makes certain that he teaches her his boyish skills. She almost feels Tyrell as she gets him to teach her how to make snares, going into great detail over tying knots. Even the brush of her hands against his is enough to have him smirking and his ears to turn bright red.

He tells her that she is unlike any other, silly, prissy girl he has ever known before. Together they make little shelters and clamber in together. He tells her all his tales about surviving in the colds. She praises him for his bravado, and lets him kiss her, and fondle her breasts. He always expresses that she allow him further. She charms him with her excitement for their wedding night. She can hardly wait, she says. But she will not shift on the fact that he will take her as his wife, not his betrothed.

Still, he teaches her how to relieve his aching loins with her hands.

All considered, whilst Septa Mordane would be less than impressed, the price of her survival lessons is less than a few jerks of a cupped hand. There was no shame for her. Really, that fault should have been placed on Harry, foolish and reckless, lead by his manhood.

She doesn’t deny that the thrill of the exchange, the excitement of a man wanting her so.

However, she highly doubted that she would miss him, come her escape.

* * *

 

She shares Randa’s bed as often as possible. She tells Randa that she is plagued with doubts and concerns. Whenever Randa probes deeper, she bursts into heavy, fat, liar’s tears.

* * *

 Whenever possible she talks to her fellow Stone, Mya. She informs Mya that her stress increases, that the gates of the moon feel like they are collapsing upon her. She professes to the girl that she fears marriage and begs her to keep it a secret. After a sennight of twitching on Littlefinger’s lap, waiting for his mention of insubordination, but never once hearing as much as a hint, she decides the girl trustworthy.

She discusses the thought of fleeing to re-join a motherhouse. Perhaps even entering the Silent Sisters. Mya gives her best council on the roads in the Vale, how to best avoid the mountain clans and keeping herself safe. The kind girl even provides Sansa a dirk for protection and recommends one of her own mules, teaching her how to saddle and care for an animal traveling over rough terrain.

But in hindsight, and the questions she asks, she makes it blatant to the clever mule-header that Alayne is not telling her everything. Some of the questions that she asks could even be interpreted as her plotting to smuggle Sweetrobin away.

* * *

 

 Littlefinger loves to give her rich fabrics, to her dress in his colours, his wealth. She informs him that she means to begin constructing her trousseau. She requests white.

* * *

 

 She has always been a fussy eater. It is easy for her to discern to perishables from the foods that will not keep. She begins to smuggle such food away from the dinner table and builds a food store in one of the smaller storerooms.

* * *

 

 And she avoids him greyscale. He stalks her and she cannot avoid his presence. Now she has to ensure that she never attends the Sept without another person, that she always has another person by her side, even be it a maid or servant. She even has to alter her routine to attempt to lose him.

It’s not enough. All it takes is for her to enter an empty corridor to be swept off her feet and thrown into a storeroom before she can scream.

“Shut up,” he snarls, quickly checking the corridor before slamming the door shut.

He pulls the scarf off and steals close to her. “Whatever you’ve built me up to be, not me. Not who I am. “

He pulled a long, pained face.  “If you mean to control me with your puss, attempt to try and seduce me, consider it excess to requirement. You’ve been around Littlefinger too much. Penetrated you in more than one way.” He looked her up and down. “More than the three obvious ways anyhow.”

Sansa gasped at such crudeness and began to protest, but the Hound waved his hand to dismiss her, like some kind of servant. “Don’t go lying to me. You’d be absolutely addled either way. Now this plan of yours? Escaping this cage? Tell me. I’ll get you out of here.”

She supposed this was the closest she would get to an apology and swallowed his indignities. She told him of her preparations and plan. She had chosen the next full moon to flee. She told him where her food store was and which mule was hers to take. She told him that she wanted to head towards Harrenhall, and which mountain clans were active in the areas she wished to traverse.  Upon finishing he whistled lowly. “You’ve grown into a talented creature.”

He asked her practical questions, mostly upon the rotations of the guards, and what procedures were to be taken if guards were sick.

“Do you wish to induce a food poisoning?” she asked.

“Depends, all it takes is for a stock pot to be kept too cool for too long. Easy enough. Got anything better in your arsenal?”

He meant to jest, but she didn’t wish to lie to him. “I still have the Strangler’s poison used to murder Joffrey. I’ve enough to kill half of the Reach.” She thought a bit longer. “I could steal sweetsleep. I don’t know how much there is and how much needed to kill though.”

He blinked slowly. “A fey creature,” he murmured, an odd look spreading on his face. “You mean to kill Littlefinger with it? Or am I to do that?”

“It’s part of Littlefinger’s fall. He’s my kill. I-I didn’t know. I didn’t know his involvement with Father’s failed coup.” She looked at him with a strength then. “He’s taught me so many things. He wanted me so badly as a lover and accomplice. All these falsehoods spun into favourable yarns. I’m going to twist his falsehoods into his noose.”

Her mouth was hurting, she hadn’t smiled with such abandon for a long, long time. She thought then of the smile he had worn during the riots, of the similarities hidden between them.

The hound looked nonplussed. “Well that’s great kid. Easy to say this kind of shit. Will it kill him, yes or no?”

“If it doesn’t it’ll be impressed,” she shrugged, “It’ll leave him maimed enough it’ll be hard to retaliate against me. But my dragons are on his death. I would do it myself. But I can’t afford to get the blood on my hands now. It’ll affect allegiances to come. I can’t afford that, not with regicide on my head too.”

He nodded. “A plotting fey creature. Not quite a little bird anymore.”

“If I’m ever safe again, I’ll be a little bird and a good person again. But I can’t be. Not now.” She could see a strand of her dull hair fallen in front of her eye. You’ve changed too, hypocrite.”

It was true. He was quieter, more prone to thinking first. There was less rage there, more a thinking mind than before.

He nodded tersely “Until the full moon, then.” and limped off, leaving Sansa alone in the storeroom as if the conversation had never occurred.

* * *

 

She thinks herself very clever, sneaking to the rookery whilst Maester Coleman is occupied with Sweetrobin. She releases the ravens carrying her letters all up to the Eyrie, knowing full well that a raven who is not received by a maester will return. The short distance of the Eyrie and the absence of food up there will result in the birds returning shortly after her escape. With luck, Littlefinger’s garrison will be looking for her and he will be left with little defense for the contents of her letters.

It’s unlikely that they will be intercepted, especially as so many ravens come and go from the Gates of the Moon, with so many of the Lords Declarant in attendance. Her letters will mix with the others.

She thinks it rather fitting that whilst a group of crows is called a murder, a gathering of ravens is deemed a conspiracy.

* * *

 

 To Lord Royce she gives a full confession. Her identity. Her aunt’s Murder. Littlefinger’s blackmail. His plots and plans. Her unknowing involvement in the murder of King Joffrey. Amongst the truths she plants a lie, and tells him that he has hired a group of sellswords to murder smallholdings and keep the smallfolk scared and subservient to him. They have the helm that once belonged to the Hound, and burnt Saltpans. One less town to feed through the winter. She pleads forgiveness and begs him to take care of Sweetrobin. She begs him, in a scared maid’s hand, to kill Littlefinger.

To Lady Waynewood she omits her identity, and leaves the letter unsigned. She does tell her that Littlefinger has borrowed all the money that he has given her. When the bravossi debt collectors come, she needs to be aware of the interest he has accrued. The message is clear. Littlefinger is no friend of the Waynewoods. He has conned them.

To Lyn Corbrey she takes a more jeering tone, telling him that Littlefinger will feed him lies and arbor gold, but to make the most of the real gold whilst it lasts. She advises him that the tide is turning, and that the Vale is going to be thrown into chaos. Then she takes a more serious tone, suggesting he make the most of the chaos quickly. Accidents happen in chaos and people don’t notice like they should.

To Harry she says that she flees knowing that Littlefinger wishes her to bed him, and then plans to murder him and Sweetrobin once the heir of the Vale is planted in her womb. A strangler seed is included in his letter as proof, and she tells him where the rest of the strangler stash can be found. She also tells him her identity. She informs him that their marriage may yet be an alliance. She signs off with a kiss. A day may yet come where Sweetrobin dies despite her ministrations and Harry’s army and food stores may be of use to her. 

To Mya she tells her to keep Sweetrobin safe, and to flee with him if he is in danger.

To Randa she tells her to stay safe, apologises to her for her falsehoods, and to keep close to Mya. She tells her that she’ll be back, and that they’ll share the featherbed again.

To Lothor Brune, she wishes the best of luck, to keep alive.  She tells him that it’s obvious that he fancies Mya’s stockings off and to go for it. The girl might not be as unwilling as he thinks.

* * *

 

 The full moon comes and she enters Littlefinger’s solar for the last time.

“Father,” she coos, barring the door. “I have a query for you.”

She glides over to him and takes the poisonous hairnet from her skirts, Strangler seeds glowing deep purple. “I thought it unbecoming that the betrothed to the heir of the Vale should not should not have the means to kill half of westeros hidden in her chambers.”

Littlefinger laughed heartily. “Easier to keep such things hidden in plain sight. Mayhaps your hairnet will become a heirloom for generations of Hardyngs to come, sweetling.”

She shook her head. “Oh, it unsettles me so Petyr. You were not there to see Joffrey die. The noise he made. It was so horrid.”

“Now now,” his arms wrapped around her and he nestled his nose in her hair, and kissed the tip of her ear.

He is far too close to her now, but she forces herself to relax and lean into him, to brush her lips against his neck, before drawing back. She smiles a sweet little smile and places the hairnet on the desk. “I’ll leave it with you here.”

Then she paused and whispered in a conspiratorial manner. “I’ll place it in a drawer actually.” She turned and placed it in the top right drawer of the writing desk. “It’s a little bit out of place here Petyr. I doubt you’ll look half as good in it as I.”

He laughed with joviality. She turned and kissed him, more forward and hard than she had ever done before, opening his lips with hers.

_Never again._

She draws back and it is all over, and she jumps away, twirling like a good little maiden. “Now that was a goodbye kiss,” The smile she beams at him is the most genuine one she has ever given him. “Sleep well Petyr. Tomorrow brings a new day.”

The taste of victory is tempered with mint-sweetness.

She attends Sweetrobin, tells him that she loves him and that soon he will not have to worry about Lord Baelish. She tells him that Lord Royce will look after him and teach him to be a great man. He begs her not to leave him and her heart breaks.

She kisses him hairline to chin, promising him that she will return and that it is good fine to be scared for it is the only time a person can be brave.

She is concerned that he might raise the alarm with his protestations, so she feeds him the first amount of sweetsleep he has had in weeks, a tiny dose, but enough for him to sleep long into the morning. She is moved to sadness she didn’t know she had. Her letter to him is short, and sweet. She tells him that she loves him, and that he too can be as brave as the winged knight.

When she leaves his quarters, her eyes are red with tears.

She attends her bedchambers, but not her bed. She changes her clothes into those she has prepared, white from head to toe. She leaves her room and leaves the Gates of the Moon without any incident.

He has dealt injury to any obstacles that may come in their way.

He awaits her, hardly visible, garbed too from head to toe in white.

Together they disappear into the snow.

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, I wasn't expecting the response I received, and it really brightened my day! 
> 
> In my headcanon predictions of what will occur in the future, and all these possible loose ends that might turn Sansa against Littlefinger, I think it will be a realisation of Sweetrobin's poisoning that'll turn her into an active player. Maybe she'll never know about Littlefinger's involvement with Ned's failed coup. 
> 
> The picture I've used up the top is 'The Water Serpents I' by Klimt again. It's just so beautiful and sensual; very erotically-charged. I thought it would be a fitting match to a chapter where components of Alayne and Sansa work together to bid for escape, and sexuality becomes a weapon and facade. 
> 
> Also this is unbeta-ed Please don't hate me.  
> Thank you again!


	3. Lure

**Lure**

****

In the long days that come then, she lives her dreams more vividly than she does her life. They come in a barrage, so rich and detailed that her senses are brutally assaulted, and in in her reality, the scents of the nights overwhelm.

Each night she finds herself feasting in a grand castle she has never seen in real life. All one hundred hearths of Harenhall blaze with light. There is a table high with red meats, and streamers and banners hang high on the wall. The colours make her heart sing. There hang the Clegane colours, black and yellow, and her own humble Stark grey.

When she casts her eyes to the dancefloor, she sees herself, red hair bound by golden thread one moment, another down, worn like a young maiden. She wears heavy yellow brocade, richer and more than Cersei ever wore, and her underskirts are black. When she twirls, a sliver of white ankle can be seen. Then the Hound takes her, paw-like hands wrapping around her tiny little wasp-waist.

The woman looks at her then, sly and vicious, and her face isn’t quite Sansa’s, but is at the same time. The eyes are clever but cruel, the smile tight and mean. When she looks upon her, Sansa’s tummy tightens into pain. It is worse than being in the presence of Cersei. The stranger wearing her face smirks, and turns back to the Hound.

He bends to her, and their faces meet. The kisses are chaste, and then they are not. His hands wander and grope, until he has enough of the identical stranger. He flips her to the floor, her skirts fluttering as she tumbles to her knees. He fiddles at his breeches, and pushes her skirts up, around her waist, until the whiteness of her buttocks glows.

He takes the similar stranger like a dog in the middle of the dancefloor. The dancers take no mind, the dances continue around them as the woman that is and isn't her sings a different kind of song, and as a pair, they dance a dance better belonging to night-chambers than a dancefloor. But with the snap of the Hound’s hips against the buttocks of the woman, the hearth light grows brighter and whiter until she awakes.

Her reality is harder.

_Food_

_Shelter._

_Warmth_.

All come in short supply.

When she wasn’t in daydream of the night before, the thought of food was her constant companion. Stranger, the Hound’s steed, had been employed to pull a sled piled high with provisions and supplies, despite the horse’s obvious dislike for the task. The Hound had hidden the steed and sled two days hike out of the Gates. She was not left wanting, the Hound’s experience ensured that the food was rationed appropriately. Nonetheless, the trek tested her body in ways that she had never experienced. Castle life had made her soft. Now there was hardness and sharpness where there was only softness before. She was always hungry for the red feasts in her dreams. 

The Vale was gracious with natural shelters, their trek was punctuated by overnight stays in caves and rock overhands. If they were caught short, there was a whaleskin that could be stretched over the sled and pinned down with wooden pegs.

But warmth was scarcest of them all. The Vale had sparse foliage, and what there was, the snow made soggy. Fires were rarely lit, both Sansa and the Hound were wary of the mountain clans and being tracked.

They both relied on layers and layers of linen clothing, fabrics that breathed enough to avoid sweat cooling to deadly ice. To protect herself from the deeper gales, from hale that stung like dagger swipes, she wore a greatcoat of Harry’s. She had told him that she planned to embroider his shield on the breast, a favour to him from her dainty little fingers, that it was more suited to a gameskeeper than the heir to the Vale otherwise. It was hardy, and waxed leather, but she imagined that it smelt more like the North, of hunting dogs and smoke. She wore breeches she had pilfered underneath her dresses on the worst days.

Each day she fought the cold, and trudged. When the snow was high, she and her companion wore massive snowshoes. Jeyne Poole would have giggled at them both, whenever it was necessary to strap on the silly things, she could imagine the girl in her head, telling her that she looked like a ducking. _Where is she now? Did the Lannisters kill her, like they did Septa Mordane and her Father?_

But no matter how ridiculous they both looked in snowshoes that made them waddle, if she were a ducking, the Hound was no Mother Goose. She expected him to watch her constantly, to condescend her wherever he could. To make no attempt to spare her feelings. She thought that he would be amazed that she had learnt some survival skills. She expected correction, belittlement, and harsh scolding.

She received none, and felt confused when she realised that she had wanted him to act in that manner towards her.

But he was more quiet than not, pensive and watchful, focused on whatever task at hand. He only rarely corrected her, and conducted himself in an impersonal and matter-of-fact way.

_I had wanted him more impressed with me. I wanted his praise and his surprise. And I am disappointed when he conducts himself like a gentleman. What do I want from him?_

* * *

 

For days on end, they skirt the high road, working their way down to the Riverlands, towards the blackened towers of Harrenhall. The days pass like snow melting in her hands, as if she is passing through mist. One day she thinks she has seen a shadowcat, and for days afterwards it slinks after her, through the days and into her dreams. But the dreams are more vivid, more real, and as she trudges through snow to an uncertain future, all she can think about is a hall covered in yellow, black and grey.

One day, more than a few days into their journey, in half dream, her foot turns underneath her, and before she knows it, she is falling, face first down a hill, shale flying everywhere. He catches her, before she pitches past him and down into a canyon. Winded, she leant against him, savouring the proximity before he sets her down.

The pain lances up her left foot and she screams and collapses. Without so much as a grunt, he gathers her up, and piggy-backs her like Robb used to, when she were littler and he were alive.

And there, no more than three hundred feet in front of them down the little valley, there were three standing against a stony outcrop, guarding a small cave. They had worried so much about the Mountain Clans, or rather, she had, back at the beginning of the journey when she had attempted to talk to him. That was before he had settled into silence and her dreams had occupied her too strongly.

Her fears had been made flesh. Rough, tatty, flesh. Two men in brown sackcloth, both with unkempt beards, both with the grimy tinge of ginger, One had a blue sash around his waist. He was the taller of the two, though he was nowhere as tall as the hound. Both carried a sword. The man with a blue sash had the longer of the two, The third was a woman, older and plain, but she had the remainders of a beauty about her, high cheekbones and heavy eyelids. Her mouth was long and thin, and her hair was plaited into a long, thin blond braid. She carried a rusted pike.

“Tribesmen.” Sansa whispered aloud, feeling more alive than she had in days.

The woman stepped forwards, lips tightening into a long line. “The Moon Brothers have no friends in the Burned Men.” She snarled. Sansa reddened when she realised that she was addressing the Hound.

The two men were looking at the sled and Stranger with wanting eyes.

Then the woman lunged first at the Hound. Her pike was easily parried and quick, he came in close and backhanded her. Sansa had heard the sound of the sword being pulled out of the sheath, but it moved too fast, and before she could process it, the tribeswoman’s leg had been sliced in twain, and she was floored.

The two men jumped in, harrying him both at the same time. He went at them both, in methodical and measured strokes. Blue sash went down first, cut near in half. The plainer of the two proved hardier, quicker even, He ducked and weaved. He was quick, and the Hound slower than he had been at his prime, but the Hound was faster than him, even now.

“ROLF. ROLF ROLF!,” screamed the clanswoman, but the Hound killed him all the same, smattering the valley floor with his blood. The plain clansman attempted to harry him, and overstepped. In a flash of steel, his belly was opened and his guts fell out to the floor. He died gasping. In the same breath, the woman scrambled on the icy shale, and threw a thin rock at the back of the Hound’s head.

Sansa screamed to duck, but the stone hit him with a horrid thud all the same.

The Hound turned , face murderous, and saw the woman on the ground, helpless, leg useless. She screamed like a banshee, but he took a stone from the ground and threw it at her with all his strength. Her face crunched with the impact, and when the stone fell away, Sansa could see that her orbital bone was crushed, and that the remains of her brain was leaking out into the snow , like pulpy pink-grey blancmange. Her eyeball, still somehow whole, had fallen into her screaming mouth.

“They hit your head,” she dully commented. Her voice was so sore she realised that she must have not talked for several days. _You hit the clamswoman’s head far worse._

He hissed and bade her to get their pilfered maester’s supplies; amongst the treatments for flux and lurgy were bandages and crepe. She nearly meant to argue with him, to tell him that he wasn’t bleeding, that all that blood was the clansmen’s. But he was battle-angry and he looked cross and yellow. If Sansa had learnt anything, it was that with the Hound, you had to pick your battles.

She turned to gather the bandages and heard a thump behind her, like a tree, falling. The Hound had fallen to the floor. His breath was shallow and shuddering, his face slack, like all the muscles in his face had lost definition and the skin had fallen. His entire body was twitching and she could smell that his bowels had loosed.

For a moment she thought him touched, possessed by the devils that inhabited the seven hells, then she recognised Sweetrobin’s sickness in him, she was well acquainted with the writhing.

He convulsed between tremors, one, two, three times before he came to a still. His eyes opened and he wretched until this morning’s breakfast came up and out of him in a little puddle. She could see whole little berries peppering the reeking mush.

_Trust the hound to swallow his breakfast quick, to not even chew._

His eyes were fluttering and he was confused.

“Come,” she commanded, knowing that if she were to panic he would too. She bid him to crawl onto the sled, urging him on in a patient, collected manner whilst she limped. He crawled like a dog, unsteady and collapsing as if he were in his cups. When he made it onto the sled he collapsed like an old man and his head sagged to the side, vomit drooling from the twitching corner of his mouth.

He groaned as stranger plodded onwards and she entered the mouth of the cave the clansmen and woman were so eager to protect. Stranger was just able to fit through the crevice.

She feared others, or the peering of children’s eyes.

But instead, the cave was empty. There was a stag, half butchered and salted pork hanging from makeshift rafters. She looked in the next chamber and found racks of smoked fish. In a third chamber she found a cavern with flowing water, the same kind of heated stream that kept Winterfell warm. It was there that the clansmen had laid their furs to sleep. She installed the Hound in the dead men’s bedstuffs. The first night she curls up next to him in the bed, even though he is deathly still and eerie quiet.

She sleeps and she is naked again. Moonblood is on her thighs again, but the castle has changed. For but a moment she thinks she is in Harrenhall yet again. But she is in the Eyrie and it is winter. She wanders around the halls. The tapestries have been put in storage. Ice covers the alabaster and marble is slippery with it. Suddenly she grows hungry, a hunger so deep she has never felt it’s like before. She wanders down to the storerooms but when she enters she realises that there is nothing there.

She races to the other storerooms and realises then that the Eyrie, shut up for winter, has no food. She will starve to death in lonely luxury.

She finds herself in the main hall, seated on the white weirwood throne. She is sitting in her own moonblood, and it is seeping out of her, and falling to the floor, a thin ribbon of Lannister red starts to stretch out in front of her, across the tiles of slate and marble. It widens into a river of blood leading to her only exit from the eyrie and starvation.

BANG!

The moondoor opens.

All of the wind of the Vale blows in. Her hair, red as her blood, tangles around her and her nipples pebble and harden in the cold. She finds herself on her feet, hunger eating her from the inside. What is a short, sharp drop compared to a slow death by hunger?

She doesn’t hesitate.

Three, four five sprint-steps and she is flying, in air so piercingly cold. She tries to contract but her limbs can no longer be controlled, the air holds them against her. She is blinded by the sharpness of the air. She looses control of her bladder and pissess out into the empty air.

She falls and falls and falls. She awaits yet another death. It never comes.

Against the chill of biting air, she meets a haze of warm heat, at first welcome, but then boiling her up from the inside. Time changes. Warps. Retards. It goes _backwards_.

She opens her eyes and she is flying up. The eyrie is coming closer and closer until she finds herself flung through the moondoor, sprinting backwards and sitting on the weirwood chair again. But all traces of her moonblood are gone, the floor covered with a lattice of roots. She looks to the moondoor and sees it barred with living weirwood acting as if it were ivy, read leaves sprouting crimson.

She blinks and the main hall of the Eyrie's hall is covered in the red leaves, marble and alabaster falcons covered in roots and branches, like some kind of living tapestry.

Her stomach growls again, embarrassingly echoing around the empty chamber and with shaking legs, she rises and walks over to a trunk rooted in the breast of a carved stone beast, a four-legged creature of shaggy countenance.

The trunk squirms as if a living creature, and bulges out until it rips open in front of her, parting into a long vertical seam, brimming with red sap.

She places her lips on the seam and drinks. It freezes and it burns down her throat, and settles heavy in her belly.

She wakes up and she burns and yearns for his male touch, for his skin on hers, for him to give her all the sweet little deaths she could ever want. But beside her he is halfway between living and dead.

* * *

 

In the days that come, he is half conscious enough to swallow, but has no mind to chew. Even though he is large, and his gullet wide, she fears him choking so much that she chews his food for him, and spits into his mouth, like a mother bird to a nestling. He makes no complaint.

When it becomes obvious he will not awake, maybe halfway through the second day, she braces herself and undresses him. She had thought that he would awake soon after, much like Sweetrobin, but he slumbered even though his breeches were reeking with his bowel movement. His heaviness made it a hard task, but soon was naked in front of her. She used a rag and cleans him using the hot water from the cave stream.

She washed him with the composure and dignity of a silent sister. _But if he dies here, I will not join that religious order. I’ll continue. I’m the last blood of Winterfell. The Stark blood will continue._

_Winterfell._

If anyone had ever told her when she had left Winterfell that Sansa Stark, Lady of Winterfell would be cleaning the shit from the hound’s bottom, she would have laughed.

She didn’t laugh now. Now, and for a sennight past she hadn’t been laughing.

Whilst the hound’s chest was covered with wiry black hair that narrowed to a thin strip down to his groin, and his back was relatively free of hair, his buttocks and legs were covered in hair, and nowhere else was the hair as dense as the cleft of his buttocks and his groin.

 _His groin_.

The hound was proportional to the rest of his body. Like his body, his hands and his muscles, his testicles were massive. His manhood was massive, even flaccid. She had tried to turn back time and compare what Tyrion’s manhood must have been, what size. But all she could really remember were tufts of yellow hair and a purple angry head. On Sandor, from the thicket of black pubic hair his manhood hung, limp, often resting against his left thigh. She thought that whilst limp and flaccid, the organ looked heavy and cumbersome.

_Would his look so angry when aroused? Would it look so angry if I aroused him?_

She tried to imagine what it would be like to have such a male organ inserted into her own female cavity, for these organs to be used together, like a sword into a sheath.  

She had traced the outside of that mysterious hole a few times, wondering how something so large could manage to fit inside her. She wondered whether that could be comfortable, even pleasurable for her, let alone how a child could come out of a hole only as wide as her two fingers.

_Why are the Gods so cruel as to make our womanhoods so small and quaint, but babes so large? Why are the Gods so cruel as to make men as they are, so pleasure-hungry and greedy, to make it so that their pleasure is stolen inside women who cannot withstand their strength._

But constantly playing the Hound’s nursemaid pulled her away from these growing thoughts.

Just as his bowels evacuated often, he too urinated, but she used a makeshift bowl she had found in the personal effects of the clansmen to catch it. His faeces was another matter.

His shit got caught in the wiry mesh of hair that grew rampant between his legs. Most days, she would have to bathe him clean and use a trowel to cart his waste out of the cave or into the cave stream, though with his illness, his bowels were slowing, and his bowel movements slower. Had Maester Luwin told her that it were a good thing? That the body was absorbing as much as possible from the food, sucking it dry for nutrients to fight the body’s battles? Or was it that as Sandor Clegane died, his bowels shut down first, an early indicator of a losing battle?

She tried not to think of it

He woke on the ninth day, not even half lucid.

“Sharp girl, eagle bird,” he mumbled through fluttering eyelids.  “All talon, all beak.”

“Maybe that is what my shadow casts. But really, all I am is no more than a wren. A little bird. A very little one” she cooed, reaching over softly, brushing his hair back, worry entering her voice.

_I can’t have the Hound becoming as simple as Lady Tanda’s daughter._

He leaned into her touch and nestled his nose against her palm, his breath warm. “Red little feathers,” he sighed. “You were a sweet little songbird once. Poor little thing you were. A sweet songbird.”

“Shall I sing for you? A song for you?”

He nodded into her hand and sighed at she sang her ballads, her folksongs and her lovesongs until sleep had taken him again. She could weep then.

The next day he was less confused, and seemed to peer at her through his eyes like he couldn’t believe what was going on.

Upon the third he awoke wholly, to his horror, aware of his nakedness and weakness, of the bowl between his legs collecting his urine.

“The fuck. The fuck.” He stared her in the eye.

“You’ve been out near ice-cold this past sennight. I’ve looked after you. Well.”

He bit the inside of his cheek. “Gods, you could have left it, left me with some dignity,” he spat.

“Interesting sense of dignity you have there, being left in your own waste whilst the wet rots you to sores. When Rickon was a baby my mother showed me his nappy rash because his wetmaid had left him in a soggy nappy too long.” Her anger mounted and his ungratefulness hit her.  “Maybe I should have let your waste rot your balls. They say that dogs are much nicer and less aggressive neutered!” she immediately regretted the last comment.

 _If you’re the one shouting, you’ve lost the argument_ whispered Petyr.

“And anyway know you would do it for me,” she chirped sweetly, but it was too little, too late.

“There’s limitations on everything, girl.” The hound barked.

He cringed as she touched him, and to his and her mortification, he began to weep with shame and humiliation, taking huge shaking breaths and covering his head with his massive hands.

“Oh,” she said, momentarily blindsighted. “Oh, O—now none of that, please, none of it. Please.” She cupped his head with her hands, then hugged him to her chest.

He shook and trembled, and his paw-like hand grasped the small of her waist.

“You’ll be back to health soon. I knew you wouldn’t leave me for dead so I didn’t leave you. Your strength will return and we’ll both leave. Harrenhall remember.”

She felt feverish with desire then, a dream of red feasts and sex-songs appearing in her mind. Was she greensighted? Is that what would happen when they got there?

He shook harder and pushed her away. “I’m no fucking invalid,” he grunted. His face began to twist into the sneer e always made when he wanted to punctuate himself with a particular sort of nastiness, but then he stopped, and his face fell.

“And no. Not Harrenhall. I dreamt of it. A spider lures you in girl.”

Her face twisted. “You dreamt of Varys? The eunich has taken Harrenhall? An odd dream.”

“No. Something older. Something even nastier and perfumed to hide the stench. Nothing good. I don’t trust it and I trust my instincts. I’m not one to take my dreams too seriously either, but this going to Harrenhall on a whim? I don’t want to go. There is something there in the towers, amongst the bats. It watched Gregor, it and I. It liked what he did there, thought him of her breed. It’s growing stronger, and it draws you in. No. Nothing good.”

“You said her.”

“Aye.”

“Was she like I?”

“No,” he shook his head. “I saw a hag, She tried it on once or twice, wore a glamour with your skin.”

“She wore Clegane colours, black and yellow?” her heart jumped in her chest, and she thought that she had seen her as she had seen. Her hair red, caught in thinspun thread of autumn gold. Of thick golden brocade and black underskirts, and pale pink buttocks, and her eyes, oh, her eyes flashing and dark, beautiful and cruel.

“Black and yellow, aye. But a Lothston she made. Didn't you see the white of her sigil?”

A shiver went through Sansa’s body then, and she curled closer to him. There was a terror inside her, like a thousand bats leaping into flight.She had thought the white a shade of her own grey.

“Then I trust you and your dreams. Recuperate and grow strong. We stay here for now. The winter is worsening.”

“We’ll starve.”

“We’re in some kind of foodstore. I think you killed the inhabitants. Anyhow, someone has left all their foodstores here. We have wheat and dried meats, salted pork and oats. We’ll survive for now. Stranger’s happy for the oats.”

“And what happens when the Clan finds their foodstores infested by us rats?”

“I think they would have come by now. Maybe you slayed the last of them. Or their murderers .Who knows. Maybe the weather keeps them. Maybe the Skykings of the Old Vale Kingdom are paying me back for saving Sweetrobin. Maybe we’re in the entrance of a barrow of an old king.”

He snorted. “Any good king worth their salt knows that to stay rich you should never pay your debts, if you can avoid it.” He laughed then, and she joined in, desperate and hoarse.

The next day he was in better cheer. Without waking her he had dragged himself outside to perform his morning obligations, and was delighted that his muscles had not atrophied to a poor state, still he was weakened, and those tasks led him to sleep most of the morning awake. His mood darkened and his lethargy became a festering wound he opened oft. She continued her nursemaiding, but engaged herself with the rationing of their stores, and knitting using the Tribesmen's supplies. 

He was prone to over-exhaustion, too much, too soon. His exhaustion was almost similar to his previous drunkenness's.

He asked her once “Was it any good for you that kiss in the sept?”

“Hm? In the sept?” she replied, ever the lady.

“Yes.”

“It was a kiss I wanted. Yes.”

_And I am telling the truth._

“I told you to quit that shit. Don’t lie.”

“No need to be so rude,” she chided. “But yes. I liked the kiss. It was intense and I liked it much better than others. I chose it, you didn’t force it upon me."

 He didn’t respond instantly, but hummed happily. “Whores don’t kiss, so it’s not as if I have much in the way of practice.”

“They don’t kiss?”

“Makes it easier to stay detached. Keeps cunt and head separate. Unless the customer is handsome and they want to enjoy themselves, I heard that some kiss then. But as you can imagine, offers to that respect are few and far between. I imagine you’ve been kissed plenty of times, pretty little thing you are.”

“My Father’s ward, Theon Greyjoy kissed me when I was little. It was my first kiss even if it was a child’s kiss. And he then went on to kill my little brothers. Joffrey kissed me too, and killed my Father. Come to think of it, Littlefinger did the same, but long after the fact. I had to kiss Tyrion and he was a Lannister. I’ve kissed Harry a few times, and well, now you. Between Harry and you, have either of you inflicted more damage upon my family?” She tried to sound jovial and amused, but her sadness felt too obvious.

“I traveled with your wolf-bitch of a sister for a time. I managed to not kill her, to my surprise and hers. But the opportunity was there.”

“Arya is alive?!” Her heart raced.

“We travelled through the Riverlands. She’s well in body, she’s mean in spirit. Last time I saw her, I was dying and she was trotting off towards Saltpans with all my silver. Late autumn, not too long after your kingly brother kicked it, within a year. Don’t know if she is alive now.”

She was quiet then, thinking about the atrocities at Saltpans. She had thought her little sister dead since the beginning of Joffrey’s reign. It was the first news she had of her. She shook her head, and tried not to think of the little girl of eleven, raped with her breasts chewed to bits.

“When was your first kiss?” she asked, changing the subject..

“Tried to pay a whore once for it, when I was a young man. She only brushed her lips against mine, mayhaps I imagined it greenboy that I was. Then she gagged. Didn’t try again. My burns weren’t half as healed as they are now, used to get infected all the time. Got abscesses in the corner of my mouth for a long time. Weren’t a proper kiss. Most people wouldn’t count it.”

She looked at his burns and wondered how bad they used to be back then. Even now his scars were horrid to look upon.

“Nobody but you has ever been so addled to have opened their mouth to mine.” He added bitterly.  “You must have been desperate to escape.”

“I planned most of my escape without you. I would have managed without you. When will you realise that the kiss was a bit too excess to requirements to actually be out of some stupid desperation? I was glad to see you, that’s all. No need to presume the worst of everything.”

She paused then. “I used to think you’d kissed me that night. That you’d threatened me with your dagger and you’d kissed me so ferociously it had made my head spin. When the other ladies played kissing games and giggled about a lover’s touch, I used to think about their reaction to the fact that I had kissed the hound. And that I liked it.”

He looked at her open eyed, then his eyes narrowed “Thinking that you had liked it should’ve been your first moment of realisation, you fool.” He growled, after a moment of digestion.

“I liked that kiss and I liked the real kiss. In the sept. Don’t tell me otherwise. You don’t get to dictate what I feel. And don’t call me a fool.” She added as an afterthought.

“Did Littlefinger give you the pox? Is your brain riddled? Your little pussy just as pretty as my face? Settling low now you’re ruined?”

“Always! This conclusion leaping. The presumption. How dare you shame me like this.”

 “I am not a fool, and you are not the little girl you used to be.”

“No! I’m a lot cleverer than I was then. Did you like me stupid? Did you like me dependent? Did it make you feel like a big man? A clever man? A clever man explaining just how shit the world is to a little girl who doesn’t know any better? By crushing her silly little stories and dreams under his boot?”

His mouth opened and closed. Then he closed his eyes and brought his forefingers to pinch the bridge of his nose. He looked pained, ill even. When he spoke, it was a harsh whisper.

“Aye, you’ve the right of it. I mourn that little girl. Makes it the second to my sister. She were of a similar breed. And it did give me a sense of satisfaction, breaking up your knights. I would say I didn’t mean you harm, but there are times when my actions point to the contrary. I’m not going to lie to you. And my actions bring me no pride, know that.”

“You stopped me from pushing Joffrey off.”

“Aye I did.”

“You could have pushed me off. You could have hit me like the others. You could have called me out and my head would have been up next to Father’s and Septa Mordane’s come the morn.”

“Maybe that would’ve been kinder.”

“Maybe it would’ve been. But I’m telling you to take pride in that. You should.”

He affixed her with an appraising eye. “As you wish it, little bird. “

He pulled a face.

“Should’ve pushed you off. Left your maidenhead for the crows. Better that than the Imp, then Littlefinger after, goodness knows who he pimped you out to” he spat on the floor.

 Sansa felt the blood rise to her cheeks. “No-one has ever touched me in such an indecent manner”

She paused, and felt that if she did give him an honest truth, maybe he would be more inclined to believe her. “I got into bed naked with Tyrion, I saw his nakedness and arousal and I didn’t like it. He groped me, but my response was so that he stopped. I shared a bed with him, but from then on in we wore shifts. He promised he wouldn’t touch me but every time he moved in our marriage bed I would flinch in fright. I could hardly sleep. As for Littlefinger, he liked to play my Father, to have me perched up on his lap and on his desk and to kiss me, for him to undress my torso. He never went deeper south than my navel. Never. But he did like to fondle my groin through my layers of clothing. I did fool around with Harry. He wanted to bed me but I engaged him otherwise. He taught me how a man takes his pleasure and how to pleasure a man with my hands. I did so several times. He wanted me to use my mouth on him, but I didn’t want to, and he didn’t make me. So there. So no f-fucking, no buggering. Don’t say those things, it’s not true and it makes me feel—I don’t know what it makes me feel, but it’s not good.”

She paused, and then spoke again. 

“And even if I had done those things, if those things had been done to me you shouldn’t be so cruel, so biting. It could have happened so easily, had any of them decided they had to take me there and then. I couldn't resist."

He spat on the floor again. “You told me not five minutes past that you had a penchant for self-deception. You’re the worst liar that is.”

She thought to cry then, but then Cersei’s words to her on that green night came back to her. The thought made her heart race.

“We’re playing a game. I’m going to call it ‘Let’s assess the Maidenhead’. You play the Maester. I play the Maiden.”

Before he could react, she was leaning back against the cave wall, and pulling up her skirts, just like the incorrigible Myranda Royce had done, not six moons past.

He stiffened and for a moment she thought he would turn away in repulsion. But instead he stared at her like he had after the kiss in the sept, eyes dark.

They darkened further as she untied her flimsy small clothes and exposed the red of her mound, the little fur that was mounted there.

She reclined to expose herself fully “I imagine that my pu-pus-—womanhood is somewhat prettier than your face. Do I look like I have the pox? Look closely. No weeping blisters or sores to be seen. Look closer.” She spread her lower lips wide with her fingers. See that I still have my maiden’s veil. It is there, isn’t it? The ride hasn’t altered my maidenhood. Has it?” she extended her finger then and pressed upon herself in such a way so that she could feel a sliver of skin, a barrier between her womb and the rest of the world.

He looked upon her, almost entranced. “All that hair, that pussy hair. It looks like it is on fire. I didn’t expect it to be so red. I’d got used to the brown shit you put in your hair.”  Then he scowled. “So Littlefinger had a taste for buggering arse—“

“As far as I know, he did not!” Sansa exclaimed, face bright red.

 “Am I the first to see this?”

“Maester Pycelle examined me after the riots, remember.”

“Show me it then, this unbuggered arsehole.”

“Huh?” she must have gawped like Lollys Stockworth. _Why would he want to see that dirty part of me?_

“Can’t you do that even, Lady Stark, dare make us a little more equal?”

He was laughing at her, sniggering and gulping with laughter.  She slid a little further back, more on her tail bone than bottom, and placed her hands either side so that he could see that little hole. It felt stretched.

He stopped laughing.  He grunted, this dark, primal noise that did something to her and feeling suddenly exposed, and bought her skirts down with one quick motion, her legs together.

His hand snapped out with a sudden quickness she had not anticipated. “You shouldn’t have done this. You don’t know what you’ve done.”

“Are you finally going to ravage me?” His head shot up and his mouth hung wide open. Now he was the one who looked blindsighted.

“I jest. I half jest. My maidenhead has proved nothing but a burden.”

“And let the many generations of the Stark name be sullied by one dog’s cum?”

“What Stark name? My Stark name isn’t keeping me warm right now. It’s more like to kill me than do me any good. I think I would like to have you. I could warm you. And you I. I want to know what it feels like. All this mystery surrounding the marriage bed, all these jokes and whispers. I know that there is pleasure to be had. Girls are bedded much younger than I. Even my honourable Father had a bastard, mayhaps my mother lost her maidenhead before her wedding night, mayhaps not. We all have our lusts.”

She looked at him then. “I would have you as my lust, would you have me.” She spoke. 

 _Woman’s weapons_ hissed Cersei.

He looked at her this acute appraising eye, a look that made her feel like she was being evaluated for the hunt. His brow came low in concentration, and the corner of his mouth twitched.

“Don’t scare. I want to check something.” He murmured, deep.

Suddenly his palms were around her ankles and he was arranging her in front of him, as she had placed herself before him. Sansa felt her cheeks go bright red, but allowed herself to remain limp, to restrain herself from tensing.

He pushed her skirts up and placed his hands back on her ankles to part her legs wide. He began with gentle stroking motions of the bone of her ankle, the tendon and the arch of her stockinged foot before rising upwards, slowly to the calf. He felt the new muscles and squeezed her, as if he were assessing a horse.

He must have found her fit for purpose, for he made a clicking, approving noise and moved up to her knee. He took time there, brushing the pad of his thumb over her kneecaps as if he wanted to trace every fold of skin, every lump and scar she had.

Then he moved even further upward. His hand halting on the little fatness of her inner thigh.

He shuffled forwards then, and very nearly his head and face were closer to her womanhood than comfortable, any closer and he would be kissing her.

She felt his strong exhale and inhale, the subtle shift of her hair.

She realised then, he was smelling her, sampling her scent like a bloodhound, eyes closed. She knew her scent and could smell it now, musky and strong and almost beastly, the most animal part of her, between her legs.

 She imagined that there were a flower there, and that he were sampling her pollen. Maester Lewin had once told her that through magnifying lenses, pollen could be seen, little seeds of substance. She imagined that her seed of substance, her pollen were all over his face now, that a Maester could take his magnifying lenses and see her presence misted all over him, a thin coating like flour, concentrated speckles contracting on his nose most densely, the traces growing fainter towards the edges of the face.

She quivered, and the very tip of his nose brushed one of her inner lips, a dandelion touch. His head shot back and his body juddered and nearly followed. Then he leaned in once again

“Little Bird,” he whispered, voice dry and impossibly low. “Little Bird.”

She realised then that he was balancing on his knees and one hand, and that his other hand was employed elsewhere, down the front of his breeches, tugging upon himself, harder and faster until his shoulders were heaving between her knees, and his breaths were gulping, gasping into the fur of her mound. 

Her hand, trembling, came to rest on his head, the section that transitioned into healthy scalp, and then the burns. 

His shoulders shuddered then, hard, and he came to a stop, planting a wet kiss on her upper thigh like an afterthought and crawling up beside her, wrapped his arms around her waist with surprising courtesy. He burrowed his face deep in her hair, and pressed himself against her.

He fell asleep almost instantly.

She thought that she couldn't possibly sleep, so excited she is, her heartbeat racing and her breath caught in her throat. She half meant to touch herself to her own completion.

But sleep, insidious, takes her anyway.

The meadow is white. She is naked again, with moonblood steaming down her legs. She attempts to wipe her blood away, but only achieves smearing it down her thighs and messing her hands.  She looks for Lady, but the wolf doesn’t appear. She calls for her. She screams and bawls like a baby, but Lady doesn’t come back to her. She never will.

She turned behind her, and where there was nothing but white meadow before, there was a stumpy, small fortress, an altered watchtower. Her legs move without her order, snow crunching under her feet. She enters over a small drawbridge. It’s a tiny garrison, one stone tower on a motte, a stumpy keep with very basic lean-to constructions all around. It was empty.

She seeks warmth. She ascends the steps on the motte to the tower, and steps inside, looking for anything to make her warm and hide her shame. The walls are stone, and cold to the touch.

She enters a room. And there is nothing.

She ascends the spiral staircase to the very top, and finds a door of strong oak, with studs of iron nails. She pushes it open to enter the room. It only contains an empty, black brazier. A primitive instinct recognises the evil before she can feel it with her senses. She tries to run, but cannot move.

Then time changes, warps, retards and goes _backwards_.

Dying embers glow and burst into roaring flame, the wood popping echoing around the chamber. She screams and her bladder empties, her moonblood mingling with her urine on the floor.

Suddenly here are three men hauling her away from the brazier, her feet flying off the ground, but a man they cannot withstand pulls her towards the flames.

She screams and flails but her face goes in regardless.

She smells pork cooking and realises that it is her flesh. It reverberates through her skull. Her lips melt and meld. Her hair burns. She tries to scream but can only breaths in the fire. It bites though her gums and licks though her voice. She fights like she never has before, she tries to scratch, tries to bite, tries to claw and to maul and to kill. But his grip is iron and his will is death.

The man throws her away from the brazier then, and she knows that she is nearly dead with shock, writhing and gasping like a fish out of water until the pain burns so hard she cannot move anymore, so much is her agony.

She lies on the floor, emitting some kind of ghastly noise, quarter-wail, quarter scream and half-whisper. All pain. She looks down. There is something in her hand, held so tightly her knuckles are white underneath her crusting moonblood. Her face screams and her fingers scream and she screams too, but slowly she opens her hand. Crushed in her bloodied palm, splinters driven deep into her hand, shattered into pieces, are the remains of a little toy knight.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. I've used Danae by Gustav Klimt in this chapter. It's only fitting considering just how much dreaming Sansa is doing in this chapter. 
> 
> As for this chapter, it's been a bit of a pain. It's full of important set up for my last two chapters, and I've got a bit stuck going from one plot to another, so this has been the most rough to write. (And I think that's pretty noticeable). I feel like this is the least clever and interesting of all my chapters, and to make it worse, it's late coming out too!  
> But still. They get a bit more (a lot more) intimate in this chapter, weird dreams happen and Sansa looks after Sandor in illness. If cleaning up poop isn't love, then maybe someone should explain the concept to me in greater detail. 
> 
> Thank you again for reading!


	4. Strangers

 

** **

** Strangers**

She awoke in the night from a Harrenhall dream that filled her with longing and fright. To calm herself she watched his chest rise and fall with his breath. Even in slumber and rest he was mighty as a bull.

Her actions earlier in the night seemed as far away as Essos, like another girl had done those brazen things and shown the hound her most secret place.

 _I was inviting him in. That’s what I was doing_ she realised with a start.

He awoke, and watched her back with eyes that narrowed to thin silver slits.

“Damn you,” he snarled. She blinked for a moment, wishing to make some clever retort, but then, before she could act, their little cave was made awash with an unnatural green light.

She recognised it, and so did he.

She rose and shimmied on her boots to go to the mouth of the cave. The green light grew more intense, casting shadows on the corridor the rock. She came to the mouth, an over the range of their valley, beyond the mountains, it seemed that a great green sun was about to rise. The snow grew luminescent. She heard a crunch behind her and knew that Sandor was behind her.

She turned to look at him, his face basked in the eerie light. In the green flickering, one side was made smooth, the other pitted and ugly, horror made flesh. That little bit of jawbone jutted green, and disgust and arousal lit a flame in her.

_I want to lick it._

She heard the earth scream in a great rumble echoing through the valley. She turned to him and he enveloped her in his arms. She held him too, burying herself in his jerkin, in his safe scent. They clung together as the world churned under their feet. She peaked out of his arms, and in the far distance she could see an avalanche in the far distance, on one of the mountains of the moon, far, far away. Even Sandor’s great bulk would not protect her should the valley bury them.

She felt small then, her arms unable to meet around his back unless she dropped then to the tapering of his waist. But the valley did not crumble around them, and the world stilled. Still, the green light illuminated the heavens.

“What was that? What is it?” she murmured, turning her head into the warmth of his chest again, nuzzling there.

“Something. Something’s burning. Someone’s burning,” he leant down and kissed the crown of her head, where her roots, tell-tale Tully red, were growing long. As if she were a little girl again, he lifted her as if she were constructed of spun sugar, and carried her back to the cave, laying her out on their furs.

“Something big,” Sansa whispered “Do you think they have lit the Blackwater again? Is there another battle upon Kings Landing?”

“The sky didn’t light up like this the night when I fled, Little Bird. This is bigger and brighter. And we are so much further away.” She could feel him trembling beside him.

She looked him in the eye, and meant to kiss him softly, chastely on the cheek, but the caught her lips with his and pulled her flush against him. He mapped her mouth with his, though his mouth dwarfed hers. She could feel his body tense against hers, brittleness melting away with her eagerness, her wanton little tongue.

His hands were gentle and soft, one snaked around her neck, the other on her waist. It soon fell from her waist to cup her left buttock, squeezing soft.

 _He likes Ladies_ she realised _He doesn’t even know where to start with bastard brazen Alayne. He has no want of her. He just wants me, with all my courtesies and favours. He wants elegance. He wants beauty. And he sees it in me._

When he begins to weep, she kisses the tears away, from both sides of his face without preference.

For a little while, in their green-lit cave, she practices soft seduction. She gives him little kisses and gentle hands, and the softest looks she can muster, a warmth that needn’t burn.

Outside the world burnt. The great light never rose into the sun, but clumps of ash begin to fall in place of the snow. They stayed on their furs for what seems like days, hidden away from the burning great game outside. She realised soon that Sandor, for all his brawn and brash ways, loved stories as much as she did. She gave him all of Old Nan’s repertoire, all the ghastly tales of winter and death she never liked much as a child, and still disliked now. She has all her mother’s tales of the Riverlands, stories of wish-granting fish and nymphs. He tells her the Westerland stories, his own mother’s tales of the faery folk and changeling babes.

“When I was young, my sister and I would pretend that Gregor was a changeling, that the Fae had no wish to keep him. We would pretend that our own brother, our real brother, elf raised, would come and slay him,” he tells her with all the giddy abandon of an adolescent’s first love.

“What happened to her?”

“What else happened at Clegane Keep? Gregor happened. Whilst I was laid out in my sickbed. When I awoke, my sister had vanished into thin air. I knew better than to pretend that the Fae had stolen her.”

They soon speak of philosophies and beliefs. She confides in him, and tells him exactly what she thinks of each Lannister. He howls at her japes without inhibition, excessively so whenever she mocks the imp.

She tells him that she would sue for peace, for what she has seen of war has been terrible, and that she is sick of it. “Our wars will only lead to destruction and death. A blood war just leads to death wishes, bleeding into the next generation, then the next. A murder for a murder and the entire world becomes a slaughter house. And that isn’t just. I want to be just. I think that means the separation of heart, and head. “ _Like a whore, heart and cunt, choosing kisses and battles for the right moment, the right person._

He challenged her to ferocious debates. “Just? Like Joff was just to your Father?  And then how he was just to you? Wouldn’t you want revenge? Don’t you want Cersei dead?”

“Joffrey’s death didn’t make me happy. It was horrid and painful, he died and he stopped. But it doesn’t undo what he has done. It won’t get rid of my scars.”

He barked with laughter and the corner of his mouth spasmed. “It took me too long to figure that out. Such a clever creature.” He fingered a ringlet of her hair. 

“Him being dead, doesn’t stop me forgetting him. It doesn’t make me forget his hurts. My doubts are voiced by him. They tell me I am the least of all my siblings, the one least deserving of survival. He is the voice I hear in the night. Him and the Queen’s. I know the queen still lives. I was framed for his murder, and I fear the weight of her love. I fear her still.”

Sandor snorted. “I wouldn’t worry too much. The Faith brought her low, shaved off all the finery and made her walk through the streets, arse-naked. Doubt she has the power to hurt you now.”

“I heard the same, but a wounded Lioness strikes me as dangerous. More dangerous than before. Cersei was always proud, and they have taken that from her. Her fury will set a flame alight. Her fall makes me fear her more.” Sansa sucked in the air between the gap of her two front teeth. “Anyhow. A walk of penitence? For what she did? Not in proportion. Unjust. Inappropriate. She will retaliate. I would put an end to her. Quickly and kindly, if it were in my power. For the crimes she did commit. Not for taking lovers into her bed, outside of marriage. What man would be punished for that indiscretion? The Faith Militant might as well make the entirety of King’s Landing naked. Nobody took Fat King Robert and paraded him through the streets.”

Sandor spat out the ale that had once belonged to the men he had slayed, and howled with laughter at the very thought. “Doubt anyone wanted to see him naked, especially towards the end, unless there was coin in the deal.”

“When the strong of the Seven come for me, when the righteous discover I have carnal knowledges? What then? Would you have me paraded so?”

“I would kill them all. “ He fixed her with a steely eye. ”You know that well enough girl.”

“Yes.” She shook her head to think of other things she had wanted to ask him. “I also heard other rumours. Was Joffrey really a bastard made of incest?” _Littlefinger told me so, but he told me many lies to isolate me, to make other men less favourable in my eyes._

“I don’t know. Mayhaps. Mayhaps not. The colour of a child’s hair is little evidence to convict an adultress. If there was incest between the golden twins, I didn’t know of it. A sin of that magnitude must be hidden, and hidden well. I was but their furniture, not privy to their secrets. Gods, if a child’s hair was the conviction needed to ruin a woman, that awful aunt of yours would’ve been disgraced once she dropped out that squalling brat of hers.”

_Was the mummery at the Eyrie so that I played the bastard whist Sweetrobin, Lord of the Land was no more than a mockingbird’s cuckoo in the nest? Have I saved Littlefinger from the fate of kinslaying?_

_Who cares? I cannot deny that he is the blood of my blood, and there is less of that in the world each passing day._

“They all said he was so cruel because he had a bastard’s blood,” she posed that more as a question, than a statement.

“Mycella and Tommen had the same looks, and they were sweet. Naturally. I got stuck with the little shit. Typical.” She quite liked the way that he would punctuate his statements with grunts to emphasise dislike. “He wasn’t bad, as a child. He grew wrong. Mycella and Tommen might yet have the same spite.”

“My brother Jon was not my mother’s. But he was anything but cruel. I was far crueller to him. My Septa taught me that good breeding makes for great Lords, but everywhere I look, I find evidence of the contrary.”

“People talk shit. You should know that now, better than most.”

“Yes. Yes, I know now.”

She appraised him. He had lost his position in court and his purpose in life because of her. She had made him wild and divided him from his masters. _I have made him wild. I have made him my own. From this once faithful hound, I have made myself a wolf._

_My own._

“Will you have me?” He blinked slowly. “Will you take me, I mean?” she corrected.

He scoffed. “Would I take you? Are you serious? Listen to yourself. Of course I would have you, in a heartbeat, right now given half the chance.”

Sansa’s face grew hot. “But I’ll be damned if I make you the Imp’s wife. We’ll go to some sept. Someplace. Get proof of a maidenhead. Enough for an annulment. If you take back the North suitable suitors will be lining up for you, maiden or no. I would have you, aye. But a wolf. Not to make you a lion.”

_My own. My wolf._

She stretched her hand out and grasped at his massive paw. For a moment he stared at her like Arya had, once upon a time, a long, long time ago, like she was soft in the head. Then his grip tightened, and he held her hand.

* * *

 

The next day they packed up. They plundered the clan’s stores and made them fit to their sled. Stranger was placed into servitude again, and he accepted his place with as little grace as possible. They wrapped up in their furs and went into this new green and black world.

The snow was stained black. They followed the valley downwards, meeting a river choked with ash. Dead fish floated at the surface. They travelled onwards, taking a sennight to make out of the mountain range, To the south, the green light still burnt, and ash still fell, and day was only just a little lighter than night.

“We scout the high road for now.” He told her. “Be cautious.”

They travelled on the high road, seeing neither mountain clansman or shadowcats for two days, but on the third day on the high road, they came unto a group of strangers. The men were not of westerosi origin. Even the darker, olive skin of the southernmost dornish was not quite so dark as the copper as the skin of these men. They walked with a natural bow-leggedness, as if they had lived their life in the saddle, and without horses, they were incomplete creatures. They carried strange curved knives, and they were bundled up in thick furs, almost as if they were not used to this climate. They wore no sigil to indicate loyalty.

One ran, whilst the other few alien men observed them from a distance, hands on their strange curved blades.

“They’re fucking scouts. Must be a swellsword company just ahead. Fucking hells.”

“Let’s assess the situation. We might have need of my ability to parlay,” she whispered back as they heard horses in the distance. A horse cantered around the clifface, rode by a man in dark armour, without a helm. The commander was a man of age, perhaps towards the end of his fourth decade, maybe even into his fifth. He was bear-like, and stocky, with whispers of a beard and a certain northern look about him, setting him apart from his alien fellows. She saw the sigil on his shield, and her hope rose in her like a flame ignited.

“Ser,” she cried, ignoring how Sandor had caught her arm in a vice-like grip. “You carry the sigil of Hourse Mormont of Bear Island. What tidings of the North?”

He looked at her strangely, his northern complexion clashing with the calculating, but honest gaze.

“Who do I answer?” He sounded like the north.

She swallowed deeply. “Please. Who are you to fly the she-bear’s sigil? _Maege and Dacey Mormont died at the same wedding as Mother and Robb, and Jeor Mormont took the black. He must have died for Jon to have succeeded him as Lord Commander._

His eyes bore deeply into hers. “I am Jorah Mormont, my Lady.”

She swallowed nervously for she knew the fate that Eddard Stark had made for the heir of Bear Island, and had thought him in exile or dead. This stranger was like to be no ally to her. She blinked and the strange foreigners parted, and through them burst a trotting knight. His shield bore two golden roses on a field of green, but was dirty and tattered.

She knew that sigil all too well.

“What is this delay? Peasants on the road?” snapped Garlan Tyrell through his visor. He looked at her once, snapped his head back to Mormont, then took a double take, and looked at her again. He shook his head as if dreaming, then pushed his visor up to blink owlishly at Sansa. _What a sight Sandor, Stranger and I must make._

He looked older and vastly more haggard than since Sansa had seen him last, at Joffrey’s blasted wedding.

“Tidings Lady Stark, it had been long since we last spoke.” His eyes flickered to Sandor. “You travel with a strange companion my Lady.”

“This is Sandor Clegane, my Sworn Shield, once Joffrey Baratheon’s.”

The introduction felt foolish. The Hound was one of the seven Kingdom’s most easily identified persons.

His eyes shifted over Sandor with an assessing gaze. “The wars and winter have made strange bedfellows of us all. I act as emissary for the Queen, Daenerys Targaryen. First of her name and holder of too bloody many others. I come to announce her to the Vale, and plead her cause.”

Lord Mormont made no attempt to hide the dislike for Garlan, and pulled a face full of distain at Garlan’s jest. Sandor spluttered a garbled expletive behind her. It sounded suspiciously like “Fuck.”

Mormont interjected. “She has taken Dragonstone, and from there, King’s Landing. The Martell forces are behind her, as are Highgarden’s.” He nodded to Garlan.

“But what of Margery?! Sansa exclaimed. “Is she not wed to Tommen?”

“My dear sister is dead. Have you had no news of the world?” murmured Garlan, softer than before. “Come to our camp. The tides are changing, and strange, and so much better understood with a cup of wine.”

“Do you have bread? Let’s preform guestright.”

Garlan looked at her oddly, and his lip twitched into a sad little smile. “I think I can manage that Lady Stark.”

They ate their bread and made their way into camp.

“Is this wise, Little Bird?” Sandor whispered to her.

“I don’t know yet.” She replied. “We might yet make allies.”

They settled down in an ornate tent, the centre of which there was a dug firepit. “My sister is dead,” replied Garlan, pulling out a skin of red, and taking a few unlordly gulps.

“So you said,” grunted Sandor. Sansa wanted to elbow him in his impolite gut. But that wasn’t how a Lady was supposed to act.

“When?” Sansa softly probed.

“Cersei burnt the great sept of Baelor, with my dear sister inside, and her ladies, my sweet cousins. Wildfire.”

_I had wished once that the Sept burn, but not when poor Margery was trapped inside the pyre. And Alla. And Elinor. And Megga._

“Haven’t you noticed the sky recently? To the south, even now, at night, the sky is lit green. I can see the ash peppering on your hair. Lady Stark.”

“Oh don’t tease me. My hair must look awful,” sighed Sansa.

“It’s not just the sept that has burnt, is it?” Sandor asked beside her. His voice didn’t even tremble, and Sansa was proud.

“That was at the beginning of Cersei’s reign. It ended with fire too. When she saw the Dothraki hordes on her shores, and knew the city lost, she made it lost forever. All this time, wildfire had been hidden beneath the city, stowed. She lit it and it burnt, and now King’s Landing is no more. And neither is most of our Queen’s army. Both the Unsullied and the Dothraki took a hard hit. They say that the dragon Viserion burnt in the inferno, and the second Rhaeghal has disappeared. Only Drogon remains with her now. We live in odd times. The lost prince has made his claim. He may be false; he may be true. But between him and the greyscale outbreak it’s hard to tell what has ravaged the stormlands worse.”

“The only thing that spreads quicker than greyscale is this fire-worship in the small folk,” muttered Lord Mormont, who had remained silent, until now.

“The Ironmen are divided into fractions. They rape and pillage the shores of the Reach. The location of Theon Greyjoy is unknown, many presume him dead, Lady Stark,” Garlan Tyrell said. “Take from that, some solstice maybe.”

Before she could comment, Mormont interjected. “There are whispers from the North. Whispers turning into screams. They say the wall has fallen to the walking dead. Some say that the commander Jon Snow, died at the wall, only for a red priestess to bring him back. Some say that she laid his wolf over his body and slit its throat. That the lifeblood brought him back. Some say that they laid him out on a pyre, but his body wouldn’t burn. That she climbed onto him and brought him back to live through fornicating with his dead body.” Lord Mormont looked at her as if she had committed the acts he had claimed her half-brother supposedly had.

“Lady Stark is a Lady,” growled Sandor. “Hold your tongue, or I’ll make quick work of it.”

Mormont shot him a dark look, and Sansa could feel the animosity grow between them.

“What of the Vale? What news is there of my cousin?” She interjected.

“There is some kind of peasant revolt. Lord Baelish is dead, or worse, deservedly so, but he had the support of the smallfolk. The highborn are trapped in their halls and keeps. We mean to send aid, and arms. In return, the Vale rallies behind the Queen. I hear Lannisport is in a similar position, some brotherhood of bandits demanding the death of the remaining Lannisters. I hear that they butchered the one’s in Lannisport.”

Sansa nodded and for a moment thought on this information, it seemed that now was a time to act, a time to become involved again. “Tell my Robin that I will bow to this dragon queen, that he should too. Convince Lord Royce. He has been itching for battle for too long. I’m sure he would delight to join your cause. Tell me how the Riverlands fare.”

“Torn, plundered. For a time there was a half-peace. But the Frey’s were murdered on the eve of the Crone’s Feast Day. All eighty score, even the women and children, hung up for dead in the great hall of the Twins, Walder Frey sitting on the place of honour. His throat slit. It is thought he watched his kin die, even the youngest. The direwolf was daubed in his blood on a tapestry behind the high table.”

“Gods,” muttered Sansa. But really she thought _The gods have answered my prayers._

Lord Mormont continued. “There are claims that in Bravos, the house of the faceless men, that assassin’s guild flies the Stark direwolf.”

Garlan interjected. “I doubt it. The Queen’s spies said that the stitching upon the tapestry was so poor that it could have been any matter of beast. Some orphan’s trick.” He was beginning to slur his words.

Lord Mormont snorted into his ale. “The queen’s dragons are bringing magic back into the world. In Oldtown, the glass candles alight once more. We live in a queer time.”

“The natural order is dying and chaos reigns, not our dragon queen, yet. It feels like this queer time is just our little world rotting into shambles. This winter is coming, and it will be a poor one for all.” Slurred Lord Tyrell.

Mormont snorted like a man who had heard this spiel too many times. “And they say that the golden twins turned into great dragons with the manes of lions in the great fire because the mad king was their true sire, and that their incest was typical to their family. Rubbish.”

“I heard a tale where the dragons fucked in the fire and then the male of the two tore the throat from the female,” snorted Garlan, who seemed to have forgotten Sansa’s presence.

“Oh, the version that I heard was that the male dragon strangled the female, then it flew to the south,” responded Lord Mormont. 

“What is it with these rumours and fucking in fire?” barked Sandor, who had had his fair share of the proffered rich red.

“Dragons don’t have gender, everyone knows that!” interjected Sansa. The three men looked drunkenly at her, and she was made very aware of the fact she had had too much red herself. “Well, it’s true! They don’t! And earlier you said that dragons perished in the inferno. How can fire hurt a dragon?”

“Some dragons burn, others don’t,” slurred Garlan Tyrell.

“Enough of this. It’s time we turn in, lest we drown in the red,” ordered Sandor.

“You’ll go to our Queen then, Lady Stark?” Mormont asked her in a tone that made it sound like a command.

“Yes. Torrhen Stark knelt to dragons. I’ll meet her and judge her for my liege. I’ll kneel happily for a good queen. I’ve seen too many a poor example of rulers.”

“As will I, providing she doesn’t kill me for the sin of being my brother’s brother,” shrugged Sandor with the suggestion that there were better things to do with his time.

“We head to Harrenhall then.” Mormont declared. “The great camp is kept there. Swear your loyalty, the imp is her hand. In her court you will have the chance to be raised high, and re-unitied with your husband. Better than traversing this torn land.”

Thousands of protestations made voice in her head, like a great swarming of bats.

“Not Harrenhall,” rasped Sandor. It made her jump, how harshly he said it. The nearby dothraki, the ones who had lost interest in the conversation and Sansa had presumed not fluent in common tongue, jumped to attention, and a scythe was placed to his throat.

He ignored it. “Harrenhall is a fey place. To Riverrun. To treat with the Dragon Queen. Not there.”

Mormont clicked his tongue. “It would be easier if you were to come easy. I do not know you and I have no wish to brawl.”

She laid her hand on Sandor’s arm. “I agree.” She said. “I have no wish to brawl either. The north cannot afford another war and I want to go home. This is as much an opportunity for me as it is for your Dragon Queen. Or rather, our dragon queen. Maybe.” She gave a smile and took Sandor’s arm, leading him from the tent. Escorted by four dothraki and two of Garlan’s men, they were taken to a tent that had been hastily assigned to the Lady, and they were given a moment of privacy.

“Not Harrenhall,” he spat. He looked angry, but his eyes were scared like he had been the night of Blackwater, like a spooked horse. “I’ve had enough of burnt ruins.”

“It was but a dream.” She didn’t know if she was telling himself or her that. “And you’ll come with me. I know you won’t leave me.”

He was angry with her. “Maybe I should forget the cruelty of women, follow the path of the saints. I was doing well for some while.”

“Some while?”

He lunged at her and kissed her hard. “Till you snogged me in a septry, cruel little creature you are.”

“What saints?” she said, breathless.

“Huh?” he grunted into her neck.

“What saints are you going to follow in the path of?”

He drew back, to think for a moment. “The very religious ones,” he replied after a long while.

“How long did you spend on the Isle?”

“It was a silent one.”

“Can you actually name any of the saints?” she was teasing him now.

He rolled his eyes. “The one that got stuck with all those arrows,” he said, after a moment of contemplation.

“Sebbard?”

“Actually, I think it began with a C.”

She shot him a sweet little smile, and he returned it, best as he could on one side of his face.

“There we go. Harrenhall. I’m not afraid of scary stories.” His smile froze and fell into a petulant scowl.

“I don’t think it’s a silly little curse. I think it’s a big fucking curse that did my cunt of a brother in.”

She could feel the expression on her face falter and fall. “I’m going. Will you come with me?”

“I’m not leaving you,” he swore, and kissed her more softly before leaving to sit outside and guard her tent.

In the morning, Garlan went east with a penned letter to Robin, and Jorah took them to Harrenhall in the company of twelve Dothraki riders.

* * *

 

 As soon as she saw the ugly towers in the distance, it felt as if Blount had pummelled her stomach again. Her terror only intensified as she grew closer, growing in illogical waves. When she saw the great gates she leaned off the mare she had been given, and vomited so quietly that nobody else noticed, save Sandor.

Passing through the great camp made her heart calm, a little. The dothraki men were strange and beautiful, and here their women and children also made camp. The holy hundred, led by Ser Bonnifer Hasty had pledged allegiance, and the seven pronged star was prominent in camp. The remainders of Riverland were there also, she spied the green tree of House Ryger, and the red Salmon of the Mootons. The Unsullied were different from other men, more regimented and odd. They kept to themselves.

But even after distraction in the heraldry she so much used to love, entering the burnt castle made her heart beat like a frightened rabbit. She couldn’t help herself from looking up into the murderholes of the gatehouse, and flinching when they passed underneath.

Then she was in the courtyard. She was vaguely aware that it was busy, filled with both men and women. But then she saw the stocks, and for a moment she was terrified to the bone, too petrified to even move. Even when she composed herself, and swallowed that black fear, the world narrowed, and try as she might, it was as if shutters had been closed upon her world view, and the only thing she could see was those terrible wooden stocks.

_Terrible things have happened here. I can feel it in the air, pressing in and on me._

“Lady Stark! How good to see—“    

She could hear a voice in the distance, some kind of deep and kind voice greeting her. But she couldn’t wrench her stare from the stocks, the horror building like pressure on the inside of her head.

“Lady Stark, are you unwe—“

_They raped them there. That’s where they raped them—_

“Little bir—“

* * *

 

She awoke on a bed to the fussing of maids and Sandor. Once assured of her wellness, he told her through barely suppressed giggles that she had fallen from her horse, and Barristen Selmy had broken her fall, and had sent him sprawling to the floor. The honourable knight, now Castilian, had been covered in stable-yard muck.

When she laughed, it felt forced, and eaten by the largeness of the bed that she found herself in, the vastness of her room. It was ornate and opulent, but it felt empty and cold, worse than King’s Landing.

Soon she was standing, and could look out over the camp that spread almost to Harren’s town, the flickering of lights, strong against the night, which even now was tinged with a little green light from the south. They had placed her in the Kingspyre tower, the tallest of all of them. From the window she could see the camp, the flickers of campfires, and suggestions of brightly coloured banners in the distance.

Later Ser Barristan attended her, freshly changed into a handsome white surcoat. He looked aged since she had last saw him, but happier, more purposeful. He dismissed Sandor and took a seat. She made niceties with him, and he was genuinely happy to see her. He impressed upon her his opinion of Queen Daenerys, his gladness that she had thought to come to him here. He promised to look after her as best as he could, and promised her that she just needed to say the word, and she would never have to see the hound again.

She refused him, telling him that she would not part from the hound and that he was loyal.

Surprised, he attempted to persuade her otherwise. Failing in that, he introduced her new maids with a measure of failure.

Kauri was a dothraki woman, thin in the torso, and thick in the thighs. Her skin was copper red and she wore wode and khol on her face. She wore thick, padded clothes and looked cold.

Vanya was lithe and pretty, originating from Slaver’s bay, and before that the free city of Lys. Her hair was dyed duck egg blue, and her eyes were a deep sea green. Her front two teeth were set so far apart that it would have been easy to pass a silver stag between them.

Pia was the only westerosi woman assigned to her, and the only one used to westerosi climate, only wearing a cotton gown. Her face once must have been pretty, save for the badly broken nose, and a shattered mouth of teeth. “Pia, if it please you m’lady,” she introduced herself. “But I’ll answer to anythink you wish to call me. I served lady Whent when she was mistress her, and she were a fine lady to serve. It was a happy time, serving Lady Whent, and it’s good to serve her blood. We’ve got all her dresses ready for you, freshly laundered. I hope you like yellow and black!”

_I dressed in Aunt Lysa’s clothes at the Eyrie and here I dress in Lady Whent’s. When I get to Winterfell I suppose I will have to wear what is left of my poor dear mother’s. Ever since I fled from the capital I’ve been wearing dead women’s clothes._

“I’m sure I will wear it well. I need to make a good impression on our new queen.”

Ser Selmy smiled warmly.

“I need to ask a favour of you, Ser Selmy.”

“What can I do?”

“Is there a Septon here?”

“Yes, the holy hundred have joined our cause, now that the Lannisters have been put to the blade.”

“I need to have my maiden’s proof assessed so that my marriage to Tyrion can be set aside.”

“My lady—“

“I know. You assumed the worst of both myself and Lord Clegane. You assumed the worst when I told you that I had resided with Lord Baelish and you made assumptions when you heard about my marriage. I am a maid still.”

“Lord Tyrion holds a high place in the Queen’s court. There would be no shame in remaining his wife. There is a measure of protection there.”Ser Selmy offered her

“I have no want of him. Had Tyrion wanted me for a wife he had ample chance on my wedding night to make me so. Anyhow. My heart turns north. I want to go to Winterfell, not west to Casterly Rock.”

Barristan paused “I’ll find a Septon for you. But for now I’ll leave you to your maids. We’ll talk on the morrow.”

* * *

 

They bathed her, adding donkey’s milk to the water to make it bone white, and lavender for sweet scent. It was the loveliest thing to have happened to her for a very long time. Vanya tried her very best to make the dark dye come from her hair, so much so that it turned the milk-water black, and stained her skin, so a second bath had to be brought up. Kauri rubbed salves into her aching body. Pia was left to trim her nails and rub her feet. She nearly fell asleep when Vanya rubbed sweet blossom oils into her hair.

They dressed her in a nightgown, a more womanly nightgown than she had worn before, low-cut and tight against her bosom. The nightrobe worn to cover was a dark blue. The slippers that matched the nightgown were too large for Sansa, so she went without.

They sat her down in front of a grand dressing mirror, and fussed over her hair, braiding it for the night. In the ornate mirror, spotted with age, she thought for a moment she thought it was her mother sitting in front of her. Vanya had done the best, but still there was a dirty line in her hair, just about by her ear. Above it shone like burnished rosegold. Below it was darker, more like the darker colour of her mother’s hair. She looked deeper at herself, because whilst her mother played a heavier hand in her features, her father was there too, a strong undercurrent. He was there in the depth of her eyes, the sharpness of her cheekbones, the length of her face.

_My features may be Tully, but my bones are Stark._

An odd splatting sound disrupted her thoughts. In her dustspotted reflection she could see a leak in the roof, some kind of darkness dripping into her chambers. She could hear the droplet fall onto the chamber floor, like a frog jumping on a tile, just behind Pia, who was folding the clothes she had arrived in.

“Kauri, can you please sort out the leak,” she asked politely.

“There is no such thing,” said the Dothrak woman after a moment of looking.

Sansa blinked and the leak was no longer there.

“I must be tired,” she said lamely.

They put her to bed, and Vanya took the short straw in sleeping on the trussle at the end of Sansa’s bed.

At some point in the night, she awoke in the night to a great pressure on her chest, so hard she couldn’t breathe. A woman was sitting on her chest, naked and ugly as sin. Pendulous breasts hung above Sansa. She could feel the woman’s core, _cunt_ , wet and slimy and cold between her breasts. Her face was the most disgusting thing she had ever seen, and afterwards, Sansa couldn't find the right words to describe her.

The hag leant in, so that what remained of her nose was near touching Sansa’s.

Her breath stank of rot and dead things, and Sansa near wretched in her face. 

“ _In the darkness of the night, I could be your Knight of Flowers,”_ the hag whispered, placing her hands around Sansa's neck.

She near screamed then, but couldn’t do so much as whisper, the pressure was great, and drew greater, pushing her down unto her bed. Her chest screamed in pain and her breaths drew short and frantic until she was certain that this was how she met her end.

Then the pressure relieved and Sansa was alone, save for Vanya, and the sound of the leak, dropping and dropping until it stopped and Sansa could move once more.

She tore out of her bed and lit the candles, with her heart beating in her mouth.

“M’Lady,” came the sleepy voice of Vanya. “My Lady?!” she shouted when Sansa near ran from the room.

The dripping stopped and Sansa shook. “I had a night scare. I’m prone to those terrors.”

She made her excuses well. _All lies were better with a grain of truth._

Vanya put her to bed again and in the morning, barely rested, Sansa slipped into Lady Stark. She wore a dark gown of black satin, with delicate yellow cording upon the seams, and little pewter buttons fashioned into little bats. She wore a little amberglass ring on her little finger that was a little too tight, but was dainty and pretty, and she had had so little of pretty, dainty things recently.  She descended from her tower and broke fast with Selmy in the Casellian’s hall. They exchanged their pleasantries, and then, after, she announced her intentions. “Let’s go to the Spetry, Ser Selmy. I want this over with.”

She less meant the examination, and more her farcical marriage to the imp.

No protestations could have stopped her, and Ser Selmy was powerless against her determination and charm. He led her to the septry, and he introduced her to a septon and septa with the purpose of examination. They were just agreeing to go together when the amberglass ring that had seemed so tight, once Shella Whent’s, slipped off her finger and smashed on the tiled floor.

Slightly shaken, but not dissuaded from her mission, they all attended the sanatorium. On a truckle bed she laid down and the Septon constructed a barrier. Ser Selmy held her hand, the very image of courtly manners as the two spread her legs and peered into her sex. The probed her open with light touches and for a moment she feared that they might tell her that she is a Lannister, wedded and bedded. But they proclaimed  her a virgin and she received a certificate in triplicate, one that is sent straight away to the Maester’s citadel for formal amendments, another to be given to the high septon, when another is reappointed, and one for her own proof.

Despite her tiredness and the terror that was singing a chord inside her, her heart sang with the destruction of this obstacle that had dogged her thoughts for so long. “Let us go to the Godswood, she begged Selmy. “My thoughts turn to the north so often, to my childhood. Let me praise my father’s gods.”

Ser Selmy took her there too, but it proved a ill tainted place.

The heart tree had a cruel face that made her feel uneasy. As soon as she knelt on the floor and touched the tree, her surroundings melted away, and in her mind’s eye, in a scape she knew was false and unreal, she saw a woman in tatters, pulling up her thin skirt to expose legs that were too thin. She squatted and with not so much as a grunt, she passed a child onto the Godswood’s holy ground.

It wailed with a thin, tinny scream.

The woman stared at the child she had birthed, and the child stilled and ceased to wail.

With a quickness that was elegant and awful, the woman took her child by the left ankle and dashed it’s head against the tree. Sansa could taste the brain-blood in her mouth as if she were the tree itself.

Ser Selmy takes her back to her tower, seeing her paleness and believing it her woman’s weakness. But Sansa began to feel that she is trapped for definite in a web.

The strangeness doesn’t stop, and over the next moon, it grows great.

* * *

 

  In Lady Whent’s quarters, whilst looking for embroidery thread, she hears a wail in the wall, a screech of a cat. Selmy cannot hear it, but she tells him over and over again to please do something about it, until he gets a stone mason to chip into the wall. True enough, they find a mummified cat entombed in the walls.

That unhinges Selmy.

* * *

 

She walks with Ser Bonnifer Hasty. He attempts to warn her of the promiscuity of her handmaiden Pia, but she informs him that the maid is of no consequence. She tries to gauge his opinion on the Targaryen Queen, he only answers that he had hoped that there would have been more of her mother in her, but her hardness is more similar to her father. Although suicide is the greatest sin, they find him in the Godswood the next day, hanging. Sansa knows that it isn’t his treasonous words that has driven him to this end.

* * *

 

Kauri wishes her goodnight and wanders off into the night, only to be found dumped in the moat three days later, raped and dead.

* * *

 

She has dreams, where she once dreamt of Harrenhall and sex-songs, now she dreams of rape, over, and over, and over again.

* * *

 

 The Dothraki horses are prone to panic. So many get loose and flee from Harrenhall that around a quarter of the Queen’s calvary is without a horse. The kennels are empty. Even the massive kitchens have no issue with rats nor mice. But the towers are infested with bats, and no matter what action is taken against them, come the night, the air is heavy with the beating wings of the swarm.

* * *

 

And she has visions. She has a dream of a mad king of old, locked in quarters that now are used as the lesser drawing room. Men come to kill him, and he weeps and wails when the six men hold him down and the seventh heats a hot poker in the fireplace. They pull down his breeches and force him to bend over. They stick a drinking horn with the bottom cut off into his anus, force him open as he bleeds and screams. He screams more when the seventh man stabs the white hot poker into the black abyss.

* * *

 

She is not quite herself and finds it hard to eat. Sandor too, her silent shadow, is unlike himself, more pale and gaunt than he has reason to be.

* * *

 

Others don’t seem to be affected like they are, and she wonders what has singled them out, what weakness they wear between them.

* * *

 

Slowly, it is as if something is being cracked open inside her, something strange and odd and beastly, and her head is cracking open. She dreams sometimes. She dreams that she has a third eye, her mind's eye. It opens, and it is wolf amber. But it is all wrong.

Her wolf is long dead, and she has nowhere to go.

* * *

 

She smuggles him into her chamber one night by distracting Pia. She sits him down and tells him exactly what is occurring. When she tells him her horror stories, he tells her a little of his own, except that they are men he knows, his brother’s men, and the things that they have done here.

“Sleep in here,” she begs, “sleep on the trundle bed.”

“That’s for your handmaidens. We need to look as if we are not what we are.”

“I want you close, I feel safe with you.”

He turned away and stares at the awful ornate mirror. Then he exploded.

“Safe!” he thundered. “You brought us to this hell and you think you can make yourself safe by hiding behind me?!”

“Yes!” she answered. “When I sleep I feel their rapes in my body. I feel their knives and their swords and I feel their, their cocks. What would you know of a woman’s plight?”

“My face is only the surface you silly little fool. Stupid little bird. My brother never left anything untouched.” He was whispering now, in a hoarse murmur that scared her more than his shouting. He seemed bigger, as large as a mountain, and his face looked like death. Black terror crawled up her throat and she couldn’t say anything.

“Does it make you sick, to know what my brother did?” He circled her like prey.  “Worse than this face? Think I’m less of a man? Think I’m queer and unnatural for suffering him?”

She wanted to cry, but knew that it wouldn’t solve anything, and could only make things worse. “No. He was a monster and you a child. I know helplessness too.”

“Aye.” He turned then to look at the mirror. Quick as a dagger, he punched the glass, shattering it all to oblivion.

“Oh Sandor.” His hand was stuck with glass, she tried to take it, but he snatched his hand away.

“Let me. Let me look.”

She took her enamelled tweezers, the ones that her handmaidens used to tweeze stray hairs, and used them to pluck the glass from his hands. His shoulders shook and he wept.

“When I got to Casterly Rock, I got the craven touch, the sickness that men get after battle. I hadn’t figured how to drown it all in red then, so I would go to the kennels, sneak in. Soon the kennel master took no notice whatsoever and I could sleep there, instead of the quarters, I was so much happier with dogs.”

“You weren’t happy being one though.” She placed her head on the crook of his neck and kissed him there.

“You’re no little bird,” Sandor sighed. “but Littlefinger made a little mockingbird of you all the same. You’re trying to play the game here.” His gaze was dark, and it awoke a clenching sensation in her lower belly. “Will you play the game with me? Are you doing it now?”

“I was born to it. It’s the only way to get the things I want. I want to be able to wear my name without fear of being murdered for it. I want my home. I want to make a family for the one I lost. Play it with me. I’ll have our wolfhounds.”

He held her hand tight, with the hand that was bleeding.

“My blood is unfit for purpose.”

“Your blood is going all over my dress fit or not. Anyhow, I want you, and I know that you will not suffer me lying underneath some landed lord, opening my legs and dreaming of you.”

“And what if my sons takes after their uncle?”

“I might mother another Bran the Bitter, or Bran the Bad. Who knows what our ancestors have given us in our inheritances? I would smother my child if it were to be like it’s uncle. With my love or a pillow. Either. Both.”

“You would do such a thing? Murder your babe?”

“I would rather not. But if that is the price I have to pay to love you, I would.”

“Such a heavy price for so poor a prize.” His voice was the rumble of an avalanche.

“That’s my choice. Mine.”

She meets his lips and kisses him softly. In the soft flickering of dying candles, she guided his hand under her skirts, opened her legs, and together, they softly push open her hymen, and open that secret chamber to the world. His finger was a soft intrusion, something unknown and not particularly exciting, but different, and sowing the seeds of promise.

She laid back then, meaning for him to cover his body with hers, but instead, in her pillow, felt something small and hard, something that hadn't been there this morning and shouldn't have been there at all.

She tore out the stuffing with lethargic laziness. She was too tired for terror, so when she found the tooth in her pillowcase, she didn’t even attempt a response. She only turned to Sandor and laid her head on his shoulder. Then she wept.

* * *

 

 The next day, she met the Queen she has heard so much about. She didsn’t see the dragon landing in the courtyard, but she is whisked down to the grand hall to face the Queen. She wore a kirtle in gold, with a bodice decorated with black ribbons, a and modest folded collar. Under she wore a plain blouse, modest and maidenly.  

The queen wore a black mantle and a long surcoat of red velvet. Her hair was worn in thin braid, with little bells shining silver against her white hair. She wore a torc of blackened silver around her neck. She striked Sansa as a handsome young woman, but her eyes wore no joviality, and were hard, like amethyst. To her left was Ser Selmy in his handsome Kingsguard white. To the queen’s right, there was a little girl, with large brown eyes. There was a cleverness in the little girl’s presence.

But the Queen doesn’t seem to comprehend her courtesies, the politenesses that kept her alive in the Keep. The Queen rebuffs her niceties with a blinding honesty, and blithely commands Sansa to kneel before her.

She drops to her knees, and ignores the hollow hurt in her knees. She’s survived worse. “I vow my obedience. I vow that when the Daenerys Targaryen comes to Winterfell and pays her respects to the tomb of Lyanna Stark, I will bow to her and recognise her as my Queen.”

The queen laughed, bitter as vitriol. “We do not have the time for this Lady Stark. I have entire realms to invade. I do not have time to amuse a little girl.”

Sansa swallowed her fear, and grew submissive, yet again. “It needn’t be today. I can call my banners now. After the war.”

The queen scoffed. “You make a presumption. Your future is to remain in the South. You will not go North. I will not suffer another Stark raising banners.”

Sansa stuttered for a moment, and then she stilled and made herself clever. Littlefinger had sharpened her powers of perception to a fine knife edge and her days in Harrenhall had not been spent idle.

The Dothraki had made the main body of the invader’s conquest forces, before so many had burnt in King's Landing. Although there did seem many, Ser Selmy had told her that their numbers had been slashed. Even so, the dothraki were major contributors to Queen Daenerys' war effort. The Dothraki followers trusted strong men. The Dragon Queen had two problems in this. She was a woman, and her powers derived from her beasts, two of which had been lost to her.

Her close advisors were not of Dothrak bearing. She understood there had been Dothrak that had been raised high in the court, but they had perished in King’s Landing. No new riders had been elected to the Queen’s side. There were whispers in camp, that the dothraki did not like being led by women, and foreigners, and old, infirm men. There had also been clashes with both other supporters of Daenerys. And the Dothrak had no like of the unsullied, and the unsullied had no like of the Dothraki. And the Dothraki were incompatible with the men of Westeros, the men this queen now had to appeal to.

The swellswords that had been brought from Essos were unhappy, and morale was low. Camp sickness had grown, and the The sickness here was different from that in Essos. The weather was too cold and wet. She had heard whispers, that before they had never seen snow. The unsullied bared the situation better, with less dissent, but this country was not their own. They bared the snow, but they did not know how to survive it.

She looked at the Queen more closely. Suddenly that third eye of hers, wolf amber and burning pulsed. She blinks and it is like she has cracked open the Queen’s head, cracked it open like an egg, and all of her little secrets are whispering to her, like sweet little songbirds. She can sense that the Queen has no love of this country, that it is too cold for her, that her dreams of a throne she has never seen feel like a destiny that she has no real love for, that it is the only purpose of a woman who cannot birth children.

That triggers something, and the Queen who has been passive and cool becomes fire itself.

“I need you south because I need you married. I’ve heard that you’ve annulled your marriage to my Hand. Excellent. You’ve pre-empted our own movements. You’ll be Aegon’s bride, lest another Dance is upon us.” Her lips, pink and pouting, purse together, tight.

But a little bit of the dragon’s fury had splintered off inside Sansa, and the fire ignited her. “No! I want to go back home. I need Winterfell, not yet another betrothal to a long and sorry list! “she found herself saying, without thinking, or calculating the consequences. It had been a long time since she had been so honest, so loudly.

“This is my order,” her lips tightened and scowled.

“Fuck your order!” snarled Sandor at her back. “She said no!”

Two little pink dots appeared on the Queen’s fair cheeks. “You forget your place, both of you. I do not possess a gentle heart. Do not test me.”

“I have no wish to marry again. I need to go home!” panic flourished and the room seemed greater and smaller, as if all the hearths were lighted and the room heavy with heat. Black dots danced on her vision.

“Look at her, Sansa, look at her,” Sandor shouted, “She’s not like to send you home, you’ll be her bitch to breed.”

The court, what there was of it gasped and began to murmur amongst themselves, like lapping on the shores of a strange tide.

“Silence!” The queen screeched. “You speak of peace but in your actions you would do nothing to contribute”

“The price is too high.”

“And your life forfeit, Lady Stark, you are accused of malingering with the Usurper’s Lord of Coin, you are accused of kingslaying, of framing your husband and my hand. A false king, an ill king, but your king all the same. As for your hound, many sins have been placed by his name, not least Saltpans, not least being a known Lannister retainer.”

“He is innocent of that crime, and he took no vows for the Lannisters! No man can hope to control where he is born,” her voice sounded shrill and bitter to her own ears, just like the Queen’s.

“And you would prefer execution? Right now?”

The panic ceased. It was as if the hell of the last few weeks was settling on her like dust, and burrowing through her skin, growing deeper and deeper till it bore seed. She wanted to laugh.

“My neck is so very small.” She raised her hands and circled her thin little neck. “It wouldn’t be such a hard task for your headsman. My Father was executed in much the same way. Ser Selmy! Do you remember the jolly little jig that my father’s legs danced when they separated his head from his body? Do you think I will dance the same?”

“Your grace, she is without her wits,” gasped the knight.

“I think I’ve been without for a long, long time now. The stranger has been stalking me for so long, first ear poor Lady, then Ser Hugh at Sandor’s Tourney, and that stallion. I can hardly remember Ser Hugh, but I remember that horse. I’ve been dancing for the stranger an awful long time now. Mayhaps it is time that he did claim me.”

Sandor made a noise behind her, a gasp, or as close to a gasp as he could produce, an awful rasp, stone on sword.

“She isn’t in a fit state to be wedded. It’s better to put her out of her misery.” scowled the queen, pink dots on her cheek becoming blotches. 

The madness regressed, and the thought of death was terrible yet again. “I demand a trial by combat.” Sansa replied, the chill of death suddenly making her tremble. “Anyone who thinks they might be able to best Sandor Clegane can prove me guilty of crimes I have not committed.”

The Queen’s anger flared. “I’ll give you a trial by combat. Yes. Your champion will be the infamous hound, yes. Mine will be Drogon, my greatest child.”

Her court gasped and the little girl that the Queen kept by her side opened her eyes wide.

Sansa breathed out, slowly and gently, so that she wouldn’t burst into tears or into hysterics. She thought about her greatest armour and garbed it. “My heart is a gentle heart, your grace. The will of the Gods will be done tomorrow.”

She left the hall and made to her room, flanked tight by Sandor, fearing his anger at her misplays.

As soon as they reached her room, she opened the door and let him in. She dismissed her maids, ignoring their cries for proprietary. It seemed foolish to maintain appearances now. A reputation didn’t matter much to a smear of ash on the floor.

She shooed Pia and Vanya out, slamming the door shut and barring it. Before her hands had chance to lay the wood down, she was crushed against the door, his breath hot against her neck and his manhood hard against her buttocks.

“They’ll sing songs about us,” he whispered into her hair. “They’ll sing about us.”

_How on earth can he be thinking about bloody songs at a time like this?_

She turned around in his arms, and grasped his massive hand. She kissed a thick raised scar that marked the back of his hand. It was straight, and white, paler than the unmarred skin. Closer to the thumb, there was a round scar, she kissed that too. On his index finger, someone or something had attempted to take a chunk out of him. She grazed her lips there.

She caught his eyes, his pupils were blown wide as if he had taken sweetsleep. She clasped his hand with both of hers, and took his thumb in her mouth. There was a scar there too, a thin ridge cleaving his thumbprint in two.

He moaned, the highest octave she had heard him voice, and she thought it the sweetest sigh she has ever heard.

She raised her hand, and she found that it trembled, she nearly placing it down until she found her courage with another of his breathy moans. She placed her hand, between them, on his thigh and he went stiff, his eyes widening.

She released his thumb from her mouth and employed her mouth to cover his protestations and cruel words, to smother him with her desires instead. Her hand rises, and if his muscles were tense, then she was feeling the stiffest part of him. She could feel his hardness, his carnal need for her through his pantaloons. It made her feel excited, it made her feel empty.

“San-Sansa,” he panted into her mouth. “Fey little creature.”

“I don’t want to talk,” She whispered back, fumbling with his laces and kissing him deep as she held him with both of her hands. He was a large man, and he was large and hot in her hands. “I mean to do all the things I want to before I die. Let me. Please. Please. Make me forget”

He trembled for a moment, and it was a mighty thing to behold, such a great man undone by her little hands. He nodded then, the large lump in his neck bobbing with a nervous swallow.

She kissed him, hard and brutal. Her hands primed him, and then she broke away to look at him, to see what she was holding in her hands. Unlike the flaccid, thick, udder-like organ she had washed in his illness, it was made longer, and thicker, hotter and redder, almost purple. But his organ, his sex organ, didn’t look angry or cruel or mean like she had feared it might.

It just was, risen and eager for her touch.

It was very honest, in a strange, appeasing way.

She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. She traced a pulsing blue vein on the underside with her finger, all the way up to the head, shaped like a heart chestnut. The stem was soft to the touch, but hard beneath, like steel clothed with soft velvet.  There was a little bit of webbing on the underside, leading to a delicate little slit, like the eye of a large embroidery needle. His manhood quivered like a sapling in a summer breeze with her touch. The slit was wetted, not to the extent she had experienced in her arousal, but weeping, a little. The tear was pearlescent.

She had a sudden wish to taste it, even though the thought was base and dirty, she craned her head, and kissed the tip, opening her lips so she could taste him there. His taste was strong, and salty, but not unpleasant.

_It’s just flesh. It’s just his flesh._

“Suck it. Suck it Sansa,” he whispered, his hand suddenly at the back of her head, placing a tender pressure, a soft pressure to take more of him into her mouth. She obliged him. She put a hand to the bulb at the root of his manhood, cupping the hot sack in the palm. She hadn’t expected the sack to be so soft.

_Have I found the softest part of the hound, here, between his legs?_

“Harder. Harder,” he moaned.

She sucked as hard as she could, hollowing her cheeks.

His moan turned to a yelp and he pulled himself out, his thick paw wrapped around the base of his member.

 _His cock_ , she thought _the hound doesn’t care for fancy names, for niceties, call his cock a cock, in his presence._ “Not that much.” He barked with a wince. “Not that hard.”

“I’ll try again then,” she murmured, hopping over one of his legs so that she knelt between his legs and took him in mouth again, sucking soft, then harder again. She tried to take as much of him in at once, but it triggered her to gag, and when she did that, he lifted her head. “Please don’t make yourself sick,” he murmured before setting her to task again.

She found a rhythm, a gentle bobbing that didn’t strain her neck. Her jaw ached and her mouth produced more spit than she had anticipated until his cock was made sloppy with it. It made noises that she didn’t think a lady should ever make, but she liked it.  His body tensed and he made another moan, a ragged cry. Her mouth was flooded with that salty taste again, stronger. She swallowed and it was gone, save for a globule that clung to the corner of her lips.

He gasped and tussled her hair, she met his eyes and licked his seed away.

“You didn’t have to swallow.”

“A lady doesn’t spit.”

Then it triggered something in her, a spark of wildfire igniting and blasting her from her body, and for a moment, just a swift little moment, she saw herself, through Sandor Clegane’s eyes. She was draped over him, lust drunk, her little bottom casting sweet curves against the duvet, her breasts pressed into his thighs. When she looked into her eyes, her own eyes, they shone a strange tone of milk white.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I didn't intend for this to be released on Halloween, but hey-ho, work is pretty time consuming, and it's pretty fitting for such a spooky chapter! This is one big unbetaed mess so please, please don't hate me for it and please pick out anything stupid, I'm late night editing and it's really not working out for me. I'm sure I've made lots of mistakes, but I'll pick them up later. (Hopefully!)
> 
> I've used Gustav Klimt's Hope II for this chapter. Such a creepy painting!


	5. Dragonbreath

** I. Dragonbreath **

When she was but a very little girl, even more foolish than she had been leaving Winterfell’s walls, she had got a very silly notion stuck fast in her head. It made her laugh even now, on the cusp of her death-day.

Once upon a time, she had thought that, just like the stories, all she need do is to prove herself more Tully than Stark, and she would be sent South to her Grandfather Hoster. She would daydream long about the genteel courtly life of the Riverlands. She would daydream about trips to Maidenpool and Pinkmaiden, the great Sers that would court her, what banners might jostle for her hand. If only she could prove herself worthy of such a thing. 

It was the banner that led her to her first conclusion. The Tully sigil was a red trout, so often worn upon her Lady Mother’s lapel. If she were to prove herself an elegant Tully fish, and not a hardworn Stark wolf she would need to perform a feat worthy of songs.

So the conclusion that she came to was that she must be a great swimmer, just as good as the Red Fork Trout.

Being a clever girl, and not completely a fool, she thought it unlikely that the Gods would bless her with gills (although she did submit her request to the Gods in her prayers).

Instead with every opportunity, every bath and visit to Godswood visit, she would swim and submerge herself in the waters, learning underneath the surface how to control her desperation for breath.

She had soon been disabused of that silly little girl’s notion by both her Lady Mother and Septa. Arya had found out one evening and being completely unable to conceal the fact that her elder sister was doing something unladylike, had tattled on her at the soonest possible opportunity.

_Trust the wolf bitch to be such a hypocrite._

She had tasted his seed. She could hear him now, projecting thoughts and words into her head. She could do the same, slipping into him. It felt easy and good, for such an unnatural thing. It didn’t seem too bad, for such a bizarre thing to happen, so close to death.

 _You aren’t listening. Being brought to climax is most like drowning_. In that ghastly dream in Myranda’s bed, she had drowned plenty of times. Once she had learnt it was inevitable, it was peaceful, the air starvation, the black spots circling in the corner of her gaze, gathering there as her extremities began to contort, her toes brought to a delightfully excruciating curl.

She gulped greedily, enjoying the presence of the air. She needed it. Her womb was pulsing. It drew her attentions from the rigid way she normally held herself.  It drew her attentions from the unladylike contortions of her face, the elevated eyebrows, the screwed shut eye-lids, the exhale and inhale of her mouth, the flare of her nostrils.

It drew her attention to the fact that somehow, in someway, the world had conspired and produced some chain of events that had led to her, at this time and place, to sitting on Sandor Clegane’s face, his hands clamped tight around her thighs.

_Seven Heavens. I’m sitting on Sandor Clegane’s face!_

“Your cunny-“ he whined, and then barked, laughing, “is on fire” he chortles, hot breath misting onto her curls.

“Kiss the flames,” she demanded, then begged.

He obliged her, first kissing as chastely as any Ser, then lapping like a thirsty dog, dividing her two nether lips with two thick fingers. He pressed his face against her as if he wanted to assimilate into her body, sniffing downwards until his hooked nose was stuffed as far into her cunt as he could press it.

For a half moment, his tongue tickled the little hole in her bottom, before inhaling and exhaling hard, licking a long, lazy slug trail up her slit.

She opened her eyes and stared down her body, under her breasts and indecently erect nipples. He was there, beneath her, just the upper portion of his face, those dark grey eyes and those terrible burns.

The leather of his face was rough against her thigh, the fissure of his lips tightening around her pleasure point, almost cruelly. He reached up and grasped at her breast as if it were an anchor. She moved against him, slick with his spittle or her arousal or both.

_I could die like this. Happy._

The throbbing pulsed and flared, and crested into a deep burn that blinded her.

She collapsed next to him, and for a while he was happy to be lazy with her, lethargic and drowsy in his pettings, but persistent. He wanted more than the intimacies they had shared.

_We’ve only got so much time._

She flew to him, frantic for his touch, unbuttoning what clothing still separated them, so that she could feel his flesh on her flesh. He was quick like the flash of a dagger, flipping her on her back, just as frantic as she was.

_It’s high time I was in you, Little Bird._

_Yes._

_I’ve waited so long for you. Can you feel it?_

_Yes._

He was fumbling with himself, guiding his cock towards her entrance. For a moment he was just a little in, beginning to stretch her, then he changed his mind, withdrew and instead ground, up and down her cleft, mimicking the action he was to take inside of her.

“Inside,” she commanded, then took matters into her own hands, reaching down to clasp his cock and guide him back to her entrance, tilting her bottom up so he could slide in. Her heels were just above his buttocks, exerting pressure for him join her fully.  It was a good thing her legs were so long and his waist thin, otherwise they simply wouldn’t close around him.

It was almost embarrassing how easy it was for her to sheath in her. She stretched, but the ache brought her no pain, only sweetness.

_This is my body doing what it was designed to do, what my ancestors have been doing.to keep the Stark line alive for years and years and years._

They were joined, cock in cunt, mouth to mouth. There was a guttural grunt that came from her, not him, and suddenly he was moving in-and-out with erratic movements.

He stopped, great arms trembling. _No this will not do._

All of a sudden she was flying through the air, launched and caught, and carried over to the dressing table. He put her down and pushed her over the table, placing her hands down. She could see her reflection in the mirror.  He was assessing her body again, running his hand down her spine. He pressed down on the small of her back, and pulled her buttocks up.

He stepped back, gave that assessing look, smiled a smile that was closer to a grimace, Sansa blew out a long breath.

He wrenched her legs open, and hung back again.

_Prettiest show in the whole damned world._

It was exciting, being before him in such an exposed way. She could see her breasts hanging, the curve of her buttocks.

_Sandor, I’m empty._

He clamped his hands on her waist and pushed himself inside.

_You’re going to look at me. You’re going to look at us. You’re going to look at me fucking you hard, here, against your dressing table. You’ll sit here tomorrow, your silly little maids fussing if you’ll wear the black or the yellow and all you’ll be able to think about will be how sore you are and wishing you had another night with me._

“Your eyes!” he roared. “Keep your eyes open! Look!”

She opened her eyes then, saw him mounting her, looked up and caught his eye. His mouth, set in a thin line, opened, slightly and his grip loosened. He hunched over her, pressing his face to the crown of her hair.

“Sweet Little bird,” he sobbed. _Sweetest little creature_ he thought.

He pushed even deeper inside of her, almost as if he wanted nothing but to merge with her flesh. He was heavy on top of her, and even the hardy dresser creaked under him.  For the first time in their coupling, there was a discomfort. She squirmed, still impaled on him, caught between furniture and cock, filled full.

_This is the closest I will ever be with anyone, ever._

She mewled and turned her head to meet his, wet patches shifting in her hair. His mouth met hers, wet with tears, hers and his. He juddered back into motion, as if he were not in true control, that his muscles were remembering the motions of the thrusting, doing it for him. All his focus was on her reflection, staring into her eyes. His muscles remembered better. He sped up, the tempo of his thrusting increasing, a transition from canter to full gallop. Her quim was slick and made little wet noises with the increase in pounding. His testicles were swinging against her, slapping against her little pearl.

He hitched her up higher, laid more of her torso on the dressing table. Her feet were off the floor, the rug only a vague suggestion only at the full stretch of her toes.

She was howling like a wild animal, which seemed only fair, she was rutting in a manner best suited to wild beasts. She grasped at his hand, redirected it down her body, past her bouncing breasts to her cunt, made him touch where he was shifting in and out of her. Then she directed his hand to her little pearl, parted her lips so that he could access it easy.

He fumbled, like a green boy, but he still built a furnace in her loins. She was burning up, the entirety of her womb alight, delightful tingles running up her legs. Her feet were lost to her, her toes could no longer be felt. Her back arched and she reared up, as if something were attempting to burst through her breast. Her heart maybe, pumping hard to fill her nether lips with blood.

She could feel his torso against her back, the hair of his chest brushing against her shoulder blades. Every third fumble made by Sandor barely glanced her, but it sent a shock all the way to her throat. That was the only explanation for the sounds that she made, the grunts that Sandor made behind her.

There was an urgency that she need kiss him now. She folded back on herself, craned her head to his and took his lips in hers, more a bite than a proper kiss. It was enough for her, and when she felt the split of his torn lip twitching against her tongue, she couldn’t help but feel her control slip, for her peak to be upon her. It was cruel and clenching, and for a moment, there was nothing but him and her, joined as one exquisite flesh.

_No life can equal such a death._

His massive hands were at her neck, and two of his fingers were in her mouth, to the knuckle. He thrust several more times, and then he was done, and she was empty of him, and full of his spill.

He threw an image into her head, and she saw herself from his eyes. _Cunt as pink as a seashell’s insides, my cum like sea foam, leaking._

Her embarrassment flared, and she fled from the table, legs jellylike and popped behind her dressing screen and used her washing stand to clean herself.

 _I find your poetic prowess lacking_ she scolded.

When she returned from behind the screen, he was lying prostrate on her bed, still naked.

“I’m a man of few, limited ambitions.” He paused and laughed. He flipped himself over and laughed until his face streamed with tears.  

She flopped down beside him and snuggled in beside him. His arm awkwardly curled around her.

“Promised, plotted, wedded, promised, plotted, bedded,” she said.

He turned to look at her. “Where did that come from?”

“I was just thinking.”

“Dangerous thing that. Thinking.”

“Joffrey, Willas, Tyrion, Harry, Aegon. Sandor.” She trailed her hand through his chest hair. “Promised, plotted, wedded. Promised, plotted, bedded.”

“Where does Petyr fit in?”

She stiffened in his arms. “He doesn’t even get to count. He’s nothing.” She looked at him reproachfully. “That was cruel, even for you.”

“I’m sorry.” He paused. “Even I am not without my fantasies.”

“Tell me one.” She demanded.

“Snaring a little bird.”

“That’s cheating. Another.”

He threw her a sly look. “Back when hate drove me,” he paused. “That’s a lie. I won’t lie to you. If I ever get a long lost look, I’m having a good old daydream. Even now. Used to warm my blood having to trail around after Joff all day. In it I’m a grand hero. A proper grand hero. Full nines. Got Selwyn’s mirror shield in one hand, Symeon Star-Eye’s star eyes worn in some kind of gaudy necklace. I’m holding the Just Maid in my hand.”

“I _knew_ that you knew the stories just as well as I did.”

Sandor pressed his lips together tightly, but his eyes were jovial. He continued. “So I’m done up to the nines and I’ve got all this shiny clobber on, so I look the part. Gregor is before me, mortally wounded. Just like the stories. Wounded and begging like a dog. Just like Urax. He begs like Urax did. He promises me wives and concubines and Cersei’s golden cunt. He promises me the Iron Thone. He promises me the throne and the lands beyond the wall. He promises to make me king of all the strange lands across the eastern sea. He begs and he makes promises and he weeps. Selwyn kills Urax at this point.

But I don’t. I tell him that I’ll cut him a deal. Us being brothers, born of the same womb, that sort of thing. I’m so fucking benevolent, so much kinder than he ever was. I tell him I’ll show him the cunting mercy that he deserves.

So he weeps. He weeps with sheer relief. He kisses my feet. He thanks me so kindly, a measure of sweetness only begging can draw from him. He begs me, he says ‘Name your price brother, I will see it done.’

I name my price. I tell him I want our Father back. His face falls, falters and his tears of joy become sorrow. I tell him that I want our sister back. He mewls like a gutted kitten in terror. A kind of keening sound. Miserable. As if all his wants have turned to ash in his mouth.

I tell him I want my face back. Then I kill him. Method varies. That’s not the important part. Important part’s the justice.” He savoured his speech for a moment. “I’ve shown you mine. I want yours,” he rasped.

She kissed him and began to whisper. “I used to lay in my bed, after King’s landing, after. Even when I was another girl who had never met you. I used to worry even after I had escaped the Lannister’s that I had made the wrong decision. That you’d kissed me and wrapped your cloak around me, and spirited me away. We would be passing that hallway, up to where Father’s head was on the battlements, and I would have run as fast as I could up to him. You would holler and shout at me. I know that’s a bit silly. In real life you’d catch me in three steps. But I would out run you. Just. You would be on the very tip of my heel, your breath on my neck.

We would go up to the battlements. Again, it’s silly. I dart up, fast as my brother used to be, scrambling up the crenulations. I have to manoeuvre my skirts and be cautious but I would make it to my Father’s head, impaled. I’ve never done such a horrid thing, to loose a head from a spear. I can’t begin to know what sensations it might provoke. But I manage it and his head is impossibly heavy in my hands. It would be gross with death. It wouldn’t matter. I would kiss his forehead all the same, like he had done so many times to me.

When we got to Riverrun I would present mother with his head and we would weep together. I could mourn properly then. I wanted to wear black so badly, but I couldn’t. I wanted to mourn and cry and be consoled.

And then later, when Mother died, I would dream about honouring her as the Rivermen do. I would lie her down in her boat. I won’t bore you with the details but I can spend hours agonising about bouquets and garlands. I would dream about standing tall and proud in Tully colours, setting her loose, firing that arrow. Sometime I would dream of her cradling my Father’s heart. If he had to be divided, it’s only fair that my Mother was to have his heart. I know that’s impossible and I have no idea where his heart ended up. But in my little fantasies, his bones to the crypts, but better his heart with the woman he loved.”

“I’ll request that. For tomorrow then,” he softly whispered.

“If there is enough of us left.”

He made a soft hissing noise and pinched her collar bone between thumb and forefinger, softly. _He’s so mighty, he could snap it in two, should the mood rise in him._

_That mood would never rise in me. But you inspire a rise in other parts of me._

Through the night, he loved her with a desperateness. When the morning sun rose, bleeding away the pale green ghosts of the night, she knew herself to be a woman, true.

_Would that I be able to see Winterfell once more, raised to glory again. Then I could die happy._

When her maids knocked, with some murmuring and trepidation. He kissed her hard, clutching at her waist before rising and clothing himself. In the morning light, she could see where she had scratched him. Had that been the third or fourth time they had coupled? The night was a shifting pattern of heartache and hopelessness, and shifting positions. Over the course of the night, she felt as if they had exhausted the number of ways a man and woman could know each other.

_It’ll have to be enough that I do not go to my grave an innocent maid._

He strode to the door, and nodded to her.

_Till later, my Lady._

He opened the door and allowed her terrified handmaids inside.

“M’Lady!” gasped Pia, not bothering to hide her broken teeth. Vanya blushed a pretty shade of pink.

She was tired and had no need of Pia’s exclamations. “Vanya, draw me a bath. Pia, brush my hair.”

“M’Lady, are you well? I can fetch a maester?

“I bestowed my favour upon him, that’s all.”

“M’lady, if he’s hurt you—“

“Pia, stop fussing as see to my hair. It’s tangled.”

“M’Lady.”

_Maybe his seed has given me some of his ferocity. Maybe I will die with his seed taking root inside of my womb._

They bathed her, with the kindness inspired by imminent execution. When they dressed her, the clothes were Lady Whent’s again, rich black velvet, with a high collar. At her neck laid a black broach that couldn’t be separated from the dress, a fat little bat to sit at her neck. The skirt was slit to display a petticoat of dark yellow brocade. When Vanya made to cover her hair with a modest linen cap, Sansa shooed her away.

“My hair is my glory. I would hate to hide it today.”

Vanya left the room to collect sweet oils for perfume, and Pia was left to comb her hair.

“M’Lady,” said Pia.

“I enjoyed my venery last night Pia. There is no need to be concerned for my welfare. Too late for that I think.”

“No, it isn’t that M’Lady. I know he’s no friend of yours, not a proper one, anyhow. You probably hate all the Lannisters, considering. I’ve sent message to the Kingslayer. I travelled in his retinue for a while, he was kind to me. Killed a bad man for me, justly. I’ve been spyin’ here a long time. I don’t think he’ll be able to do much. But I can carry a message maybe, anything you want to say to him. Only seems fair.”

“I thought the Kingslayer was killed in King’s Landing?”

“Nobody’s looking for a dead man. Nobody’s looking to kill a dead man. Dead’s the best place to be nowadays,” Pia looked acutely embarrassed. “Oh I’m terribly sorry M’Lady, that was poor of me.”

She thought about the Kingslayer, who Robb had once spoken so lowly of, of those lost days in Winterfell. He had been handsome then, and golden. Petyr had told her, with glee, that the Kingslayer had been crippled, and lost an arm. He had murdered her Father’s men, men she had known since she was young, Jory, and Heward and Wyl.

Just as she had lost the people she had loved, she thought it likely that he too must have lost an incredible amount. Especially if he had loved his sister as much as the rumours said he did. “Tell him that I didn’t kill Joffrey. It was Littlefinger. And the Tyrells. The Queen of Thorns knew he would hurt Margery just like he had hurt me. They wanted Tommen king, because he was kind and wanted to control him. They framed me. Tell him that I am sorry for his losses. I know that ache too well. Can you brush my hair a little longer? Please?”

Pia did so and for a little longer, Sansa sat with her eyes screwed shut, and pretended that it was her mother. A little later today they might be re-united.

 _That wouldn’t be so bad_ she thought, even though she nearly choked with tears.

She composed herself again. Her Lady mother would not be best pleased if she looked a mess.

Vanya returned with the perfume oils and breakfast, porridge with a little honey. She ate what she could and waited for Ser Barristan to come for her. She was too anxious for needlework and pacing the room seemed too undignified.

He didn’t make her wait long, and met her with two Dothraki guards in attendance. She left Pia and Vanya in her quarters and walked with Ser Selmy down her tower, across to the maiden’s, down then through the courtyards and through the three keeps. They were quiet and none of her acquaintances were brave enough to look her in the eye.

It was like being in King Joffrey’s court once more.

He led her through the gates and out towards the great lake. She saw wooden structures across the field.

“I didn’t know there was a tourney here. Not recently.”

“They never tore down the stands from all those years ago. Even after the rebellion, all that war. Still standing. It’s almost fitting, all this history.  The Queen thought it poetic. An era starting here, and—“

“Ending with me,” she pulled a face. “It won’t end with me. Killing me won’t solve anything.” She rolled her shoulders.

Ser Barristan remained silent, they drew closer.

“My apologies Ser. It was wrong of me to say such a thing. I wish you the best in the moons to come. I dream of long springs and summers. And longer peace.”

She could hear chatter from the stands. Most of the castle and camp must have been there.

His voice cracked. “That is a good dream. A lovely dream.”

“A dream. A song. A pity that life isn’t more like one. What a great pity.” She shook and near cried. The din grew louder and all she could think were that so many people had gathered to see her murdered for her name.

They were nearly at the tourney entrance, and he beckoned her to walk through. “I’ll be on the dais. Be brave, Lady Stark.”

He put a comforting hand on her shoulder, then turned away quick.

She faltered for a moment and her heart leapt up into her mouth. She took a breath. Where Ser Selmy had placed his comforting hand on her shoulder cooled. She heard heavy footsteps behind her. There was only one man that it could possibly be.

“Little Bird,” came the voice of the Hound, echoing inside his helmet. “Ready for this swansong?”

She turned and nodded to him, short, curt and most of all courageous. Then she strode through the entrance, her champion behind her.

The din grew quiet. When she had heard of the Tourney at Harrenhall, she had not imagined that the stands stood so high and grand.  The dias was higher than that at her Father’s Tourney, a long lifetime ago. For the first time, she saw the Targaryen banner, the three headed dragon, red on black, a story high. The Queen was but a silver blob in the distance, another face in a sea. There were stands for the commons, the entire pitch enclosed as an arena, four stories high, the same ridiculous grandeur that built Harrenhall. She saw riverlander's banners, banners she had been taught as her Grandfather Hoster's. Then she saw the Frey's two towers in the audience, and nearly shrieked. 

She assembled her armour, piece by piece, and pulled her shoulders back, drew a breath and held her head high. She strode towards the dais, kicking her skirts with such an angle that they billowed. She knew that to the onlookers, she would look as if she were gliding. No-one would accuse her of not appearing a lady.

The silence grew heavy.

Somewhere deep in the crowd, towards the very top of the stairs, someone barked, and Sansa’s heart dropped down into the adder pit of her tummy.

 _Oh no. Oh Gods no_ she thought _he hates being called a dog._

She strode forward two, three more paces. She could shoulder the silence. She relaxed back into it.

Then she heard it again, from the other side of the arena. Then again. And again. And again until it seemed that all of the men watching, regardless of origin had formed some primal camaraderie to bait them both. It built into a tidal wave of sound, hundreds, even thousands of men barking like dogs or howling like wolves.

_I should have been more discreet. The entire castle must know what happened between wolf and hound last night._

She ignored them and focused instead on the dais, stemming her tears at the root, and not allowing them to fall. They were jeering names at her too, names she didn’t know she even possessed.

If Daenerys Targaryen was Stormborn and Mhysa, The Unburnt Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Queen of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains & Mother of Dragons, then Sansa was the Hound’s Bitch and Queen in the North, Wolfqueen, Lonewolf, Deadfish, Burntfish, Shapeshifter and Skinchanger.

One man shouted that they’d have to sow the Hound’s head to her neck in lieu of a wolf’s. Another screamed that she’d match the burnt remains of little brothers.

Somebody screamed something else into the air, and for a moment, she barely understood it but as a collection of syllables caught in the air.

"Lothston’s heir," someone screamed.

She faltered in her pace, and turned to the castle again, the fine hairs on the back of her neck rising with fright. There in the highest tower, the ugliest and the most burnt, in the window there, she saw her, _herself and not herself_ , leaning out of the window, red hair streaming like a banner.

 _Lothston’s heir,_ she thought.

She felt Sandor’s presence behind her, it broke her trance and she renewed her pacing to the dais, ignoring the insults and silly sounds.

The Queen stood and all fell silent. The queen wore a dress of red satin. A red ruby, large as an egg, laid at her throat. Her girtle looked to be made of sculpted silver, in the shape of dragons. Her hair still had those odd little silver bells woven into her braids, glinting in the winter sun. It was almost as if she had precious diamonds woven into the bulky plaits, worn in a bastardisation of Westrosi and Dothrak fashion, half up, half down. The little girl was there to her left, a little dainty looking thing.

“Let it be known. All I wished for was a return to my home. It falls on you.” Her voice didn’t tremble. She made it as cold as the winter, strong as the wall.

Ser Selmy climbed the dais from the far right, and Sansa saw that her little husband was in attendance too. He wore his Hand’s chain, and a black doublet. His nose had healed better in his absence, and he had a little pointy beard. But he was still small, and twisted. She held his gaze, looking deep into his horrid little eyes, one black, and one green. His smile was small as he was, and bitter as thistle to match.

It was easier to meet the Queen’s eyes, cold and reptilian, than to look upon her Lord Husband.

Her heart felt as if it might burst.

Then she heard it, over the howling and the barking and all the foul things being said. She heard a roar, vicious.

A shadow spanned over the grounds, it’s wings flapping sounded like the clap of thunder and when the dragon landed, the sheer weight of its dropping lifted the top layer of snow into the air. It was larger than a galleon, each glinting scale of black obsidian the size of a heater shield. The beast had horns, like those of an ox made large, and red as his eyes, pits of embers.

It opened it’s mouth, and it glowed. Smoke curdled between its long, black teeth.

Someone howled in the arena, a lone wolf’s lament.

She looked her death in its eye.

In the deepest recesses of her mind, obscured by fine silks and sweet lady’s scents, a savage little voice, beastly as a wolf, whispered.

_Not today._

She didn’t quite understand herself next. She felt the howling as if it is lodged in her head, a constant ringing in her ears. The broach at her neck seemed to press to her throat, cutting into her breath. The vortex caught her, and for a moment, her fear built to pitch white terror. The ringing wolf howl became a scream, on and on and on.

Her mind scrambled in distress and something inside her flared, something terribly unladylike, something very, very wrong.

If she were a fair maiden in the stories, she would have commanded all the honourable animals of the forest to aid her. But she was in Harrenhall, and there was naught to aid her.

Save for the bats.

Back in Winterfell, the Godswood was home to a flock of starlings. Maester Luwin loved to take the children out of their lessons to see them circling in the soft glow of the Northern sunset. The starling flock moved in a shifting group of thousands, shifting black shapes waxing and waning in the sky. A murmeration. That was the word that Maester Ludwin used.

But the bats possessed none of the grace of the birds, and could only be called a swarm.

And it was all too much. Too many minds slipping through her consciousness like pondweed through cupped hands, like the flames of a forest fire, burning from the inside. She heard the men who mocked her, their shouts and yells and screams vibrating through the featherlike ears of her swarm. It was too strong for them, and it was too strong for her.

The worm roars, and it made her terrified and it made her strong. She made her come to one conclusion. That she must kill it to make Sandor safe.

_Swarm it. Take the eyes of the beast. Blind it. Make it weak._

In one bat she tastes dragonblood, black like tar slurry, sweet and heavy as nectar. In another she wrenches the gristle of it’s eyelids. She tastes the frenzy and the blood, like the sweetest ichor, like lust. She is in the bat that bursts the hard shell of the left red eye, and is covered in the pulp.

The dragon is screaming and she is sure that the Queen who condemned her is screaming too, all the little bells in her hair ringing. But with so many little minds trapped in her own, it was terribly hard to say.

Then she fell out of the swarm, and she is alone in her body once more, human and dainty and weak. In her minds absence she has fallen to the floor and her petticoats are soaked through, her legs wet with winter slush. Her bottom was cold.

_They don’t talk about this in the fucking songs._

It lumbered now, screeching, turning it’s head left and right. The first jet of black fire exploded from it’s mouth.

It lumbers, blind, and Sansa did the most natural thing in the world, and surged her mind forward and _bridges into it._

Her mouth was full of ash, her belly full of fire and hate. It resisted her, and rears on it’s back two legs, slamming it’s thick fat tail down to act as a counterweight. She felt pain lance up the beast’s tail as it crashed down onto a stand, thousands of little splinters pierced through the dragonscale.

It bent its head, every single shift of that long neck an act against her presence. With its long cruel talons it gouged at its already ruined eyes, down its sharp muzzle. It started to retreat, shaking its head all the while, as if it could shake her out.

 _Submit to me she_ asks, sweet as cinnamon.

And then she was in control of the beast.

_My skin has turned from porcelain and ivory to steel and dragonscale._

And then the beast resisted again, having lulled her into a false sense of accomplishment. It spouted fire, and she was near evacuated. But she remained within it. She heard men screaming. The fire crackling, and through her beastly snout, it smelt like sweet cinnamon and absinth, like the scent of sex, the same scent that hung in the air when she left the Kingspyre.

Sandor’s scent.

_Sandor._

She was fed up, and made to leave that beastly body, to enter back into hers, but the easy leap she had made before was closed to her, and she was stuck, as trapped as she had been for so long. 

_She’s taking my body. Mad Danelle is going to take my body. She’ll take my love and she’ll take Winterfell. She’ll ruin Winterfell. She’ll hurt Sandor._

_Nobody’ll hurt him. Nobody will hurt him ever again. I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all._

This wasn’t like the songs at all. In the stories the Princess never became a wounded beast. A witch never stole away with the Princesses pretty body and her lover. The unfairness boiled up inside her.

She turned to where she approximated the dais was, only knowing by how much the worm fought her, how desperately he tried to wrench control from her. She could smell the Queen. In the dragon she elicited the soft scent of mother’s milk, sweet warm tender touches. But Sansa’s anger was stronger, blacker and the screams of the men who had humiliated her were greater motivation than control. The fire in her belly burst and poured up her throat like wrenching vomit. It pooled out of her, and she regretted it the moment she did it.

There was a terrific noise.

Then there was a great weight upon her neck, footsteps of some gnat running up her body, to her head, gripping and staying on even when she tried to shake it off. It stepped onto the slopes of her vast forehead and she meant to veer upwards, and flick the intruder off. She did so, and a great pressure pushed into her eye, a little pin of blinding hot pain.

And then she was in the Godswood of Winterfell. Under the red leaves of the heart tree, there was a similar stranger there, in the snow, a tall woman. She turned to face Sansa. Her skin was as fair as milk, her hair the red of sunset. Her lips were as petals of a rose, and her eyes were as black as ebony. She was as wicked as sin.

Sansa meant to speak, but others spoke for her.

 _You’re—you’re not one of us_ stated the timid little bird who never forgot her courtesies.

 _She’s not us. You don’t belong here!_ shouted bastard born and bastard brazen Alayne, furiously.

Lady Stark announced _she’ll never be part of us._

She smiled. “You’re a murderer now. Same as the rest of us in this wicked world. You’re as bad as all of them. There’s a wolf in you, more vicious than Cersei could ever hope to be. Petyr taught you the game so well. We’ll never die. Oh, sweetling—“

 _Not today_ snarled that vicious little girl.

It was her turn to speak now. “There’s no shame in surviving a winter,” her voice was strong, like her Lady Mother’s had been. “I’ve done things. I have no shame. I have no pride. But I prefer kindness over cruelty. My preference is for love over hate. But even I have no love for you.”

She reached out to the wolf by her side. The wolf opened it’s eyes, yellow and dangerous. It said nothing, it only acted. Its jaws were strong, and its bite was winter.

The madwoman screamed.

She woke in her own body. For a moment it felt too small, composed incorrectly with all the joints in the wrong place. She shifted on the floor, and looked to the other side.

A head stared back at her cleaved open like a sheep served by the butcher.

_Sandor must have protected my body when I took that of the dragons. How many men tried to kill me when I took control?_

She turned to try to find Sandor. His sword, was stuck fast in the dragon’s eye, and he was standing on the beast’s snout, attempting to pull it out. He looked at her, rolled his eyes, shrugged and threw up his hands. He left his sword in the beast's eye.

She tried to stand, on two legs rather than four, and turned from Sandor to see what her fury had wrought.

The tiers of the stand were alight with black flames. There were men caught in the conflagrations, running and screaming as their banners burnt. Through the smoke, she saw the banners of House Frey burn in the distance, amongst the throng. It brought her no pleasure. 

She looked to the dais, and there, in the black enclave, the queen was standing bare, in the flames, pale and beautiful. Her hair was gone, burnt away with her clothes, only the metal of the girdle left, dragons melted and fused together, molten around her waist, a black strip dripping from her navel, over her sex to her knees. Her mouth was open, slightly, her face aghast.

The smoke caught in her throat and suddenly Sansa was furious that it had come to this, that this had come to fire and blood and that it couldn't have been solved with words. “FIRE AND BLOOD,” Sansa shouted. “FIRE AND BLOOD AND ALL YOU’LL EVER RULE IS THE ASHES.”

What remained of the dias crumbled under Daenerys’ feet, and the Queen fell the story to floor.

Sansa composed herself, and walked towards the Queen. The woman struggled to stand and managed it for a moment, then her knees knocked together, once, twice, then she collapsed on the floor, skin white under ashes.

She drew her cloak from her back and covered the naked girl.

“My apologies,” she heard herself saying. “I didn’t mean this end. I didn’t intend to kill your beast. I truly thought I would die here today. But when mine was threatened, I just couldn’t let you hurt him. The things I will do—“

The woman looked at her with shock clear on her face.

“I’m sorry. For your loss. And all this. But I’m going to go home now.”

The queen made no sound, only clutched at the cloak, tight. Sansa nodded to the Queen, but did not curtsy.

She made her way over to her champion, and gestured for him to follow her to the entrance they had entered. It looked as if they could simply walk out, provided they beat the fire working it's way around the stands. 

“Do you think that it’s wise to let her live?” he grunted. 

“She’s going to have a rough time burning down Winterfell. She’ll have to do it the same way as anybody else.”

“Isn’t it burnt?”

“I’ll rebuild it.”

* * *

 She was home.

Winter had come, bitter. She could hear the wind screaming outside her walls. Outside the snow had fallen as high as to make waves. Early on they had to set up rope between outside doorways. Now it was nigh impossible to make it to the outer keep, let alone to go to the godswood. Provisions were tight.

She heard a rough voice ring loud in her head. _Off to Winterfell to see the fair Lady, heigh-ho, heigh-ho._

Sandor had headed down to the feast early, she could already sense his joviality, his drunkenness. He was excited too, to see her, to know her body again. As soon as he had seen her in the Great Hall earlier, he had wanted to know the new curves of her body. He had looked at her burgeoning teats and had decided that he was to taste her milk first before any puppy had the chance. 

When she had sent out Commander Clegane to the Dreadfort, her instructions were simple.

  * Kill the Boltons
  * Salvage as many of their supplies, and bring them to Winterfell
  * Return to her alive



Her lords knew fully well that it was Sansa’s efforts that were keeping them alive, them and their families. She knew how to play the game, better than some of her untested lords and ladies. The wars had killed the strong, and the experienced. What were left were the daughters and sisters, the elderly and the youths. Those never expected to inherit anything, so they had not been tutored for it.  Petyr had taught her how to herd sheep.

That wasn’t quite fair. Her lords and ladies were more like a series of pivots and levers she had to balance to achieve her own aims. She enforced the rules, was as just and righteous as she could be. But she divided and conquered them. She drew them apart to ensure they would never be able to usurp her, sowing little seeds of discontent where she had to, but also sowing little seeds of unity. They all had to face the winter together after all. 

She always fancied herself a gardener, a composer almost. She could make her Lords and Ladies sing a sweet tune.

There was a chill in the air. Even the oldest of her peoples were commenting that this must be the coldest winter of their times.

Her people now included wildlings that had migrated downwards, fleeing a dangerous foe. A little retinue of Riverlanders who had seen what she had done at Harrenhall had migrated up with her. A few Vale knights had been sent to serve her, a kind gift from Robin. She kept a strange court, a mixed pot, not without it’s intrigues.

And she knew that they all watched for her warging powers. If only they knew she warged, poorly. Only with Sandor was it comfortable to slide into his form. Only with the bats had she felt the same, and she suspected that that was only because Danelle wanted access to her. Any other beast resisted her to the point of self-destruction. It was of little matter. A lady did not intrude, and was not nosy. She liked her own body best. Her peoples didn’t follow her for her show of warging at Harrenhall.

They followed her for food and warmth and shelter. And Sansa knew that.

They called her the winged wolf. As a child that would have inspired a romantic image, a wolf with billowing white wings. Her personal sigil was of a wolf, snarling, body stretching long down banners or shields. The wings were a bats, black, Suitable for a woman who had married a murderer, and made him take her name. It was a warning to others, not to underestimate her.

 _I’ll steal a sweet kiss with the point of my blade, heigh-ho, heigh-ho_ he rasped.

And although Commander Clegane had a fantastic ring to it, it was even sweeter to call him Sandor Stark. 

She still had her vanities. One of the wildling shieldmaidens had made her a hand cream from goats milk and sweet lavender. There were the last of the summer Jonquils. She had a thin braid of Sandor’s hair plaited tightly and arranged in a rosette, a little glossy badge to wear on her lapel. Sometimes she wore one of the bat buttons from Lady Whent’s dresses. There was even a little paste of crushed pearl, to line under her eyes when she had been up, reading for too long, or up fretting about provisions, or tensions, or enemies, alive and dead.

She had found a few of her mother’s jewels in Fat Walda’s dresser. Not all of them, but a few trinkets worthy of a high lady. She would wear them tonight, at the celebratory feast.

She looked at her mirror, and saw her face. With trembling hand, she applied a thin liniment of lilly and wormwood. Underneath the padding of her flesh, she could feel the bone of her skull.

There were horrors in the world. She had made contact with Jon on the Wall. She knew that the dead were coming to besiege Winterfell. The battles that were to come could not be fought with ink and negotiations. Her duty was a heavy and thankless one. The only thing heavier was her dread, her fear for the babe growing strong her stomach.  

What future was being made for her child?

Behind her the door opened. Those heavy footsteps could only belong to one person in Winterfell.

There was no stopping it. She would meet the Stranger one day. That would be inevitable. But not today. Her heart lifted, and sang as if it were a bird, free.

The world, for all it’s terrors and cruelties could be beautiful. It was her duty to carve that new world, to make peace and to teach kindness.

She turned from her reflection to look her hound in the face.

He made his way to her, singing, the snarl of dogs fighting, “I’ll make her my wife and we’ll rest in the summer shade, heigh-ho, heigh-ho.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first fanfiction I have ever finished. Thank you for reading this. It's a bloody heavy read, and I know I can be pretty effusive at times. I've jam packed a lot of things into this fic. I'm not sure if I've managed to communicate all my ideas half as well as I wanted to, (I have a lot of material for one-shots now) Please leave any comments, don't be afraid about being nasty or picking my stuff apart, I want to improve.  
> Thank you to the people who left kudos and commenting, I wouldn't have bothered past the first chapter if no-one had encouraged me to write further.  
> Also Klimt. It had to be the kiss, to finish it off, right, right?  
> Thanks for reading!


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